Religious Knowledge
Is it really a “shocker” that many Americans are poorly informed about religion? J.D. at Democracy in America thought so, and he went on to say this:
Still, as Steven Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University, writes, it is very odd that “those who think religion is a con know more about it than those who think it is God’s gift to humanity.”
No, it isn’t “very odd.” It isn’t odd at all. Let’s think about this. First of all, many of the people who think “religion is a con” are surprisingly obsessed with the subject, and some of them spend an inordinate amount of time railing against it. It seems reasonable that they would pick up at least some superficial knowledge of the details, if only as a means for making fun of religious beliefs in great detail. Most believers don’t think “religion” is God’s gift to humanity. They will probably say that they regard the religion they profess to be God’s gift, and for the most part will be indifferent to or uninterested in the others.
Some of the more interesting findings concern what Americans don’t know about their own religions’ teachings. The 45% of American Catholics who don’t know Catholic Eucharistic teaching sounds surprisingly high, but then you consider the state of the American Catholic Church, the preoccupations of many American Catholic bishops, and the extent to which American Catholics have become fully Americanized and to some extent Protestantized in their cultural and religious habits and it doesn’t seem surprising at all. After all, how are these Catholics going to know these teachings if many of their hierarchs and priests aren’t teaching them on a regular basis? Along the same lines, the minority of Protestants that cannot identify Martin Luther as the first major Reformed theologian doesn’t really surprise me. How many Protestant chuches put that much of an emphasis on church history? How central to modern Protestant religious practice is knowledge about the early Reformers? My impression is that it is not particularly important. These results don’t tell us as much as some people seem to think that they do.
The farther afield into world religions one goes, the more one is going to find that Americans are no more knowledgeable about the religions of the rest of the world than they are about anything else in the rest of the world. A nation that cannot locate Iraq on a map is not a nation that is going to know the religious demographics of Asian countries about which they know even less than Iraq. I’m not excusing the ignorance, but I also don’t assume that the fact that most Americans regularly attend church has any relationship to whether or not they can recognize Hindu deities. Being religious and having extensive academic religious knowledge are very, very different things, and religion professors should be among the first to know and to emphasize this.
The Pew survey report does contain these crucial points:
Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment – how much schooling an individual has completed – is the single best predictor of religious knowledge. College graduates get nearly eight more questions right on average than do people with a high school education or less. Having taken a religion course in college is also strongly associated with higher religious knowledge.
Other factors linked with religious knowledge include reading Scripture at least once a week and talking about religion with friends and family. People who say they frequently talk about religion with friends and family get an average of roughly two more questions right than those who say they rarely or never discuss religion. People with the highest levels of religious commitment – those who say that they attend worship services at least once a week and that religion is very important in their lives – generally demonstrate higher levels of religious knowledge than those with medium or low religious commitment.
Put another way, people who have spent more time finding out about religion, pay more attention to religion and take a greater interest in religion are better informed about religion. That isn’t exactly breaking news. We would presumably find similar gaps in knowledge about politics between politically engaged and politically apathetic citizens, and the same would go for pretty much every other subject.
This discussion interests me because I came to Christianity from a thoroughly secular background by way of a fairly extensive self-education in religious texts of all sorts. Viewed one way, I was extremely well-informed about world religions by the time I was 20. As I look at it now, I was still stunningly ignorant of the most important Truth of all. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I am fairly sure I could have answered all of these questions correctly, but what would that have shown? It showed that I was a religion major and had read many books. That’s all very well, but that knowledge didn’t mean that I understood anything that really mattered.
Good post. You might find the comments by Matthew Nesbit (science communication scholar) interesting:
http://bigthink.com/ideas/24260
Thanks.
Praj
Bad on J.D. – Prothero never said it was “odd”. He was not even surprised.
“First of all, many of the people who think “religion is a con” are surprisingly obsessed with the subject, and some of them spend an inordinate amount of time railing against it.” Change “many” to “some” and “some” to “a few” and you’ll be on sounder footing. As is, it is an unsupported generalization. And how would someone makes fun of religion in great detail with only a superficial knowledge of the subject? Finally, their own religion is exactly what Prothero meant, come on.
“That isn’t exactly breaking news.” Know that atheists and agnostics knew more about religion controlling for level of education as well. I wrote a short post on this subject this morning, and I really want to dig into the details, but the server is always down when I’ve checked it. I’ll revisit it tomorrow.
As I look at it now, I was still stunningly ignorant of the most important Truth of all. By the time I was a sophomore in college, I am fairly sure I could have answered all of these questions correctly, but what would that have shown? It showed that I was a religion major and had read many books. That’s all very well, but that knowledge didn’t mean that I understood anything that really mattered.
Quoted for truth.
Higher scores across the board would be nice, in the same way that it would be nice if everyone knew more about everything, and for the same reasons: fewer misunderstandings and more interesting conversations. Nevertheless, this survey seems to have been constructed to privilege the sort of religious literacy that interested secularists might acquire rather than the sort of focused knowledge that devoted believers would (should?) tend to cultivate.
Yes, those who see religion as a con might be knowledgeable about it because it gives them terrific ammo to make fun of believers.
Or it may be that they have researched and thought about religion more thoroughly than have many or most believers and come away unconvinced and sometimes even concerned about its potential dangers.
Naah. Got to be the first explanation.
[...] and Indifference Daniel Larison and Jamelle Bouie both have sharp posts analyzing the much-discussed Pew finding that atheists and [...]
” … many of the people who think ‘religion is a con’ are surprisingly obsessed with the subject, and some of them spend an inordinate amount of time railing against it.”
Surprising? Inordinate? I don’t think I ever would have cared about religion one way or the other if Christians hadn’t harassed me for being an atheist all through high school. “Why don’t you believe in God?” “You know you’re going to Hell, right?” I had to learn to defend myself in all kinds of impromptu debates with would-be missionaries trying to save my soul.
The adult world isn’t too much different. America is filled with Christians who believe they ought to have by right greater political power than I do, who think there’s nothing wrong with discrimination against me, who want to have their religious beliefs endorsed by the government and taught to my children whether I like it or not.
American Christians constantly force their opinions on others — is it any wonder that we know so much about their opinions, or that we resent it?
J.Bennett, exactly! Atheists and agnostics being knowledgeable about religion shouldn’t be the main storyline here. (Note that Prothero predicted it would be). The takeaway should be that American Christians know surprisingly little about their faith traditions. There has been very little meaningful discussion of the Pew survey, even though it’s generated an enormous number of blog posts. [I include my own, by the way. My theory about theology questions turned out to be wrong]
Also, allow me to indulge my ego to post my response to Douthat (trackbacked above) here because he might actually read it and the NYT’s comment system was down for 23 hours – hung up on my submission.
Ross: As for nonbeliever, it would have been only slightly different than agnostic (1%) plus atheist (3%). 6% of people answered no to “Do you believe in God or a universal spirit, or not?” The discrepancy is likely due to the fact that those 2% don’t like to be labeled as an a-something due to any number of reasons. It is highly doubtful those 2% would have significantly different score than atheists and agnostics. [or maybe that distinction doesn't exist. 1% and 3% could have been rounded down and 6% rounded up.] The “nothing in particular” (which is an unfortunate label) are probably what other polls have called “unchurched” or “unaffiliated.” They believe in God / Spirituality, but they don’t attend any church. Thus, their ignorance would still fall under the believers category.
In addition, “nothing in particular” scored about the same as white mainline Protestants and white Catholics. 15.2, 15.8, 16.0 respectively. How do you get “among the least literate” from that? (The actual least literate scored 13.4 and 11.6)
First, drop the scare quotes. It’s bad enough being defined as against something that has no meaning for you (not collecting stamps isn’t a group) and being among the least reputable groups in the country and that have almost no chance at political office.
Second, the fact that anyone has to declare that they are an atheist merely shows how widespread religious indoctrination of children is and how pervasive religion is in our culture. If children weren’t converted to religion starting at birth, then there would be no need to de-convert. What would be truly interesting is if Pew would conduct the same poll in countries where atheism is more accepted and see if they have a similar advantage in religious knowledge. (controlling for education)