Today's news and then the blogosphere was filled with the results of the survey recently conducted by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Find the official report here. The media was quick to report that professing atheists/agnostics scored highest: an average of 20.9 correct out of a total of 32 questions. White evangelical Protestants (who seem most worked up about this) came in fourth with an average of 17.6 correct.
There's a little more and a little less to all of this than first appears. First, the atheist/agnostic category scored particularly well on the questions about non-Western religions (7.5/11) while the aforesaid WEPs nailed on average only 4.8. (Jews did the best--an average of 7.9 correct.) Hardly shocking that WEPs weren't strong in non-Western religions.
Second, WEPs came in second on knowledge of the Bible and Christianity (7.3/12) to Mormons (7.9/12). The atheist/agnostic category, however, came in third at 6.7. The Bible/Christianity questions were not hard. (Check a short version of the survey here.)
I suspect that atheists/agnostics did well on the Bible/Christianity questions because to profess either in a predominantly (albeit passively) Christian culture requires a conscious choice and because many atheists/agnostics had been raised in home where (ir)religion was taken seriously.
In any event, perhaps American WEPs and their churches should spend more time learning the content and history of their professed faith and teaching/catechizing their children about it and less time complaining about political and social decay.
28 September 2010
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"In any event, perhaps American WEPs and their churches should spend more time learning the content and history of their professed faith and teaching/catechizing their children about it and less time complaining about political and social decay."
ReplyDeleteSpot on, Professor Pryor!