Posted on 09/27/2010 10:13:02 PM PDT by svxdave
A new survey of Americans’ knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.
Forty-five percent of Roman Catholics who participated in the study didn’t know that, according to church teaching, the bread and wine used in Holy Communion is not just a symbol, but becomes the body and blood of Christ.
More than half of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the person who inspired the Protestant Reformation. And about four in 10 Jews did not know that Maimonides, one of the greatest rabbis and intellectuals in history, was Jewish.
The survey released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life aimed to test a broad range of religious knowledge, including understanding of the Bible, core teachings of different faiths and major figures in religious history. The U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the developed world, especially compared to largely secular Western Europe, but faith leaders and educators have long lamented that Americans still know relatively little about religion.
Respondents to the survey were asked 32 questions with a range of difficulty, including whether they could name the Islamic holy book and the first book of the Bible, or say what century the Mormon religion was founded. On average, participants in the survey answered correctly overall for half of the survey questions.
Atheists and agnostics scored highest, with an average of 21 correct answers, while Jews and Mormons followed with about 20 accurate responses. Protestants overall averaged 16 correct answers, while Catholics followed with a score of about 15.
Not surprisingly, those who said they attended worship at least once a week and considered religion important in their lives often performed better on the overall survey. However, level of education was the best predictor of religious knowledge. The top-performing groups on the survey still came out ahead even when controlling for how much schooling they had completed.
On questions about Christianity, Mormons scored the highest, with an average of about eight correct answers out of 12, followed by white evangelicals, with an average of just over seven correct answers. Jews, along with atheists and agnostics, knew the most about other faiths, such as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Less than half of Americans know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, and less than four in 10 know that Vishnu and Shiva are part of Hinduism.
The study also found that many Americans don’t understand constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools. While a majority know that public school teachers cannot lead classes in prayer, less than a quarter know that the U.S. Supreme Court has clearly stated that teachers can read from the Bible as an example of literature.
“Many Americans think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are tighter than they really are,” Pew researchers wrote.
The survey of 3,412 people, conducted between May and June of this year, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points, while the margins of error for individual religious groups was higher.
____
Online:
Pew online quiz about religion: http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/09/28/survey-americans-dont-know-much-about-religion/#ixzz10nV6vmib
If Jaywalkers were any stupider, we’d have to water them.
I got all but one.... Need more Jewish friends apparently.
bookmark
They are everywhere.
Old Joke:
For as few Jews as there are, I seem to know a lot of them.
Maybe we are not expected to argue over the number of angels that can fit on the head of a pin?
W
“You answered 15 out of 15 questions correctly
for a score of 100%.”
Take that ya high-faluting atheists!
Who was it who once said that religious scriptures are the greatest weapons Atheists have, or something to that effect?
Perfect Score, thanks to reading and interests, not school.
Yeah, but the question they asked was a multiple choice, and the other options weren't even remotely reasonable. It's not like they're trying to trick respondents with ambiguous questions.
You do know that literate Americans are the minority in the general population, right?
And 50% of all Americans are below average in math.
Most Americans think that Martin Luther was a twentieth century American. They don’t know about the German religious reformer Reverend King was named for and that beside his religious reforms, the German Martin Luther is probably the second most important person after Gutenberg in the rising literacy of that era. Luther pushed for the Bible to be translated into the language of the people and translated it into German himself.
Thanks. A silent ping went out.
Of course, the ‘inmans’ here on FR are the exception to this. :D
I remembered it from you telling me, so I got 15/15 too.
I did it and only missed one thing (the early preacher), and thus scored with the rest of my coreligionists, at the top. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.