The New York Times today reports that Americans are “deeply ignorant about religion,” and that atheists and agnostics are better-informed about religion than their religious peers.
On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.
Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.
Atheists and agnostics scored an average of 65%, while white Evangelical Protestants scored an average of 55%. The lowest scoring group, Hispanic Catholics, had an average score of 36%.
For example, the Times reported,
¶ Fifty-three percent of Protestants could not identify Martin Luther as the man who started the Protestant Reformation.
¶ Forty-five percent of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols, but actually become the body and blood of Christ.
The survey, by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, also says, “Previous surveys by the Pew Research Center have shown that America is among the most religious of the world’s developed nations. Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults say that religion is “very important†in their lives, and roughly four-in-ten say they attend worship services at least once a week. But the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions – including their own. Many people also think the constitutional restrictions on religion in public schools are stricter than they really are.”
This is perhaps most alarming, in the wake of Texas school boards recent rewriting of history. The study found that “fewer than one of four knew that a public school teacher is permitted “to read from the Bible as an example of literature.†And only about one third knew that a public school teacher is permitted to offer a class comparing the world’s religions.”
Jason Boyett, who writes a column titled, “One of Little Faith” at the religion blog, Beliefnet, concedes that “frequent surveys find that atheists and agnostics are more educated than people who do believe in God.” Boyett links that quote to a 2008 piece in the U.K., titled, “Intelligent people ‘less likely to believe in God’”
America is in many respects, an ignorant nation. In “Ugly America: What the Failure To Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Reveals About the U.S.,” I write, “America, once seen as the “Land of the free,” has sunk so low in the civil rights and liberties we afford some minorities that we are now in some areas on-par with countries like Somalia, Vietnam, Iran, Libya, Cuba, and Afghanistan.”
I wonder how many Americans are aware of that?
Is it any wonder that countries which are seen as even more religious than America, say, Spain, Portugal, and Argentina, support same-sex marriage? And, countries that are seen as less religious, say, Iceland, The Netherlands, and Norway, also support same-sex marriage?
Is America’s problem religion, or ignorance?