Losing—and Recovering—Our Religion

Civitis Institute ^ | 5/18/26 | Jason Bedrick

[EnderWiggin1970]

Americans no longer understand the biblical roots of our constitutional order.

When a professor at Princeton begins a by recounting that students at one of the world’s most prestigious universities had to have the Ten Commandments explained to them, the natural reaction is disbelief. Surely Gregory Conti was exaggerating? But within days, his essay had drawn corroborating testimony from a chorus of academics at other elite institutions.

A Northwestern professor teaching students who had never encountered the word “Exodus.” A former University of Virginia faculty member undergraduates who could not parse Martin Luther King Jr.’s references to that same story — references that animate the moral architecture of the “I Have a Dream” speech and “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A Bard College professor that “most students [are] completely ignorant of Bible stories (Hebrew Bible and New Testament) and history of religion,” adding that “we fail them by not requiring exposure to religious texts and tradition.”

These are not stories about parochial schools failing to produce catechists. They are stories about the country’s flagship universities producing graduates who cannot comprehend their own civilization.

Conti, a self-described non-believer, is careful to frame his concern in secular terms. The problem he identifies is not impiety but. “It’s increasingly common on college campuses to encounter students who are unfamiliar with the most basic features of Christianity, such as the difference between the Old and New testaments or between Catholics and Protestants,” he writes. “They seldom recognize the allusions to the Bible that appear in Shakespeare’s work or in Lincoln’s second inaugural address (or in Obama’s first, for that matter).” A student who does not know what the Ten Commandments are cannot understand Michelangelo or Milton, Bach or Bellow, Dostoevsky or Douglass. ...

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TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: foundingfathers; religion; worldview

[PGalt]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xwtdhWltSIg&ra=m

[Flaming Conservative]

I listened to Speaker Johnson pray yesterday. It was one of the most powerful and anointed prayers I have ever heard.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

Bookmark

[T-Bird45]

FTA: “ A student who does not know what the Ten Commandments are cannot understand Michelangelo or Milton, Bach or Bellow, Dostoevsky or Douglass. ...”

And here we thought the problem was just an inability to think critically. Now it appears that thinking at a basic level, let alone being literate or mathematically functional, is questionable. This is a tall hill to climb.

[Honorary Serb]

Back in the day, “secular”MIT taught both Old and New Testaments in its required humanities courses. It also taught Augustine, Dante, and others.

Some Jewish students complained, but MIT did not listen. Nowadays, there are probably muslim student complainers, too.

[lightman]

Biblical illiteracy has become a problem for many Seminaries.

Ignorance of music—even basic Western staff notation—has reached a crisis level at St. Vladimirs.