Pew Study on US Religious Knowledge

[Peanut]

Pew Study on US Religious Knowledge.

So I've known about this particular study for a month but have just recently hunted it down and am finding it really interesting. Basically, the study has found that, in average, atheists/agnostics, Jews, and Mormons have the highest level of basic Religious knowledge in America based on questions in the categories of the Bible and Christianity, World Religions, and Religion in personal life. Before you start screaming about Biblical illiteracy, here are some other things that this study found:

1. When it came to the Bible and Christianity, the two highest scoring groups were Mormons followed by White Evangelicals. The real problem for White Evangelicals is in the other two categories where the scored on the lowish end.

2. Taken directly from the study: "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." There are other factors listed around this one, but they aren't contrary to this and, in fact, all of them seem to flow from this to varying degrees.

3. There does seem to be a tie between these scores and education even though the survey tried to take it into account.

4. There seems to be a racial aspect to how well people did on this test as, generally, white's scored higher. This probably says more about our societal structure then anything else (if this makes me sound like a racist I apologize, that was not my intent).

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Very interesting study. I will nitpick at this though... I guess for broader knowledge in general.

More than four-in-ten Catholics in the United States (45%) do not know that their church teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion do not merely symbolize but actually become the body and blood of Christ.

While Traditional Catholicism does not teach that it is symbolic, it also does not teach that it actually becomes the body and blood of Christ. Rather, it adopts ideas from Greek philosophy (as Augustine and Aquinas essentially Christianized Plato and Aristotle, respectively) regarding the idea, I think, of Plato's forms. With there being a perfect form of everything that exists.

And so it is not the blood and body of Christ materially, but rather they are the immaterial "essence" of Christ (This is more than just a "symbol"!). This may not be what is exactly taught nowadays, but that is what transubstantiation originally was.

Anyone, please supplement/correct me if I'm like... wrong or anything. XD

[Syreth]

Initial reactions:

1) It's not surprising to me that Mormons scored high because of the level of education and devotion that they have to not only their own religion, but to proselytizing.

2) It's too bad that evangelicals scored low on knowledge of other religions.

[Dante]

I got 14/15 correct, better then 97% of the public.

But I believe it is biased. I took the poll myself on the linked webpage and have placed my thoughts below.

[Spoiler]However, I think a lot of the results they claim originate from strong poll bias. Of course atheists will score better, they have no reason to focus their understanding on Christianity alone. My poll asked questions on Hindu gods, Ramadan and the Jewish faith. Honestly, churches aren't going to be teaching about the Bhagavad-Gita anytime soon. Furthermore, many people may know that the Jewish faith has their Sabbath on Saturday, but it's a subtle fact that their days start on the previous evening so that their Sabbath actually starts on Friday.

Another bias? Politics. Two of the questions focussed on hot political topics. I got one on prayer in school. Did the Supreme Court rule that a teacher cannot lead a class in prayer? Another asks if a teacher can quote the Bible as a source of literature.

Looking at the questions, I should have only gotten 13/15 correct. I had no clue what the "first awakening" was. Reformation, cool, American Christian history however, doesn't feel overly relevant to me. Therefore, I wouldn't know who did it and was forced to guess... I was lucky. The other one I got wrong? Politics. My other least-favorite subject.

So sure, the poll shows that US religious knowledge is lacking in terms of breadth. That's perhaps why it shows a greater amount of understanding with respect to education. Lower educational levels leave religion as one's "gap", they just don't touch it to avoid massive class debates and political debacles. So kids don't learn squat in schools about global religion to avoid ticking off those who want equal time for Biblical studies. In college, this changes, everyone is an adult and there are even "required" courses on religion which take up ones general studies or humanities credits. The student is finally given some exposure to religions around the world and presto, they can answer the poll better.

Overall then, I'm not sure if this should be a major concern for most of you. If you take a lot of pride in your understanding of other faiths, then maybe you should do a little reading to figure out who Shiva is (hint: it is not a Final Fantasy Summon). Otherwise, the poll states little about the depth of people's religious knowledge in their own faiths, where such information would be far more relevant and a lack would be considered far more disturbing.[/spoiler]

[ich1990]

I got 15/15, but I agree with Peanut; those are curiously chosen questions, and many are not representative of general religious knowledge. I get the feeling that they were selected so that newspapers can turn them into bite sized factoids.

[Cognitive Gear]

Initial thoughts:

1) This isn't surprising. Americans are famously ethnocentric.

2) Why did this study decide to single out evangelicalism from all of the other denominations?

3) As would be expected in America, the results for the lowest level of education line up with that of African Americans. This indicates more of a socio-economic divide rather than a racial one.

4) What is a "White Mainline" Christian? Is it everything that isn't "Black Protestant" or "White Evangelical"? Both "Black Protestant" and "White Mainline" are incredibly general.

5) They have included some general knowledge questions, including some on US law, which I am certain would upset some individuals. Thankfully, they simply kept to the facts, and are not prone to any sort of bias.


Overall, the questions are well selected. Some of the results really blew my mind, though. For example, it seems more people chose Brown vs The Board of Education than chose the Scopes Trial when asked which court case was about teaching evolution in schools. I'd like to think that if there was one court case people would remember, it would be Brown vs The Board of Education. They could have at least admitted that they didn't know.

[Peanut]

Very interesting study. I will nitpick at this though... I guess for broader knowledge in general.

While Traditional Catholicism does not teach that it is symbolic, it also does not teach that it actually becomes the body and blood of Christ. Rather, it adopts ideas from Greek philosophy (as Augustine and Aquinas essentially Christianized Plato and Aristotle, respectively) regarding the idea, I think, of Plato's forms. With there being a perfect form of everything that exists.

And so it is not the blood and body of Christ materially, but rather they are the immaterial "essence" of Christ (This is more than just a "symbol"!). This may not be what is exactly taught nowadays, but that is what transubstantiation originally was.

Anyone, please supplement/correct me if I'm like... wrong or anything. XD

Althouse has taught you well...but I think you're misusing it. The people who didn't answer that who were Catholic choose that it was a symbol instead of becoming the body and blood of Christ (that's their words not mine). Not what you or Althouse said.

Edit: Also after taking the test, I really don't think the questions were all that loaded. In fact I found them to be pretty general. Pascal's analysis of both his results and the questions pretty much sums up my thoughts on this. The fact that there is a category in Christianity that is doing a good job teaching about Christianity isn't really that bad. In fact, I don't think you can ask the church to do much more except maybe fostering a more open attitude towards people examining other beliefs by studying the words of people who actually believe those things.

1) This isn't surprising. Americans are famously ethnocentric.

Eh, not sure this is a point that undermines the study. Jews blow us out of the water as far as ethnocentrism goes and I would say it extends beyond the borders of Israel to include America. I could be completely wrong on this but the Jews I've met in America do bear many of the ethnocentric qualities of the Jews I met in Israel.

2) Why did this study decide to single out evangelicalism from all of the other denominations?

3) As would be expected in America, the results for the lowest level of education line up with that of African Americans. This indicates more of a socio-economic divide rather than a racial one.

4) What is a "White Mainline" Christian? Is it everything that isn't "Black Protestant" or "White Evangelical"? Both "Black Protestant" and "White Mainline" are incredibly general.

The choice of "White Evangelical" did bother me a bit as well mostly because that is such a broad term. Evangelical can be refer to Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists (I think), along with a myriad of other denominations. The choice to single it out isn't all that surprising though since Evangelicals tend to differentiate themselves from what would be considered Mainline churches and Mainline do the same back to them.

I agree strongly with your third point as I said earlier.

White Mainline in this context probably refers to white individuals who go to Lutheran, Orthodox, Anglican and some other protestant Churches I can't really think of (though there might not be any more then I listed). Its more specific then White Evangelical but not by much. I'm not sure what they were thinking with the Black Protestant bit though because that is incredibly general.

[Warrior 4 Jesus]

I got 13/15. I stuffed up the Jewish Sabbath question. I said it began on a Saturday. I also got the Pakistani religion one wrong. I guessed the First Great Awakening question, since I'm not an American but the rest were easy.

[Roy Mustang]

Edit: don't care and not worth it anymore!

[Mr. SmartyPants]

Edit: It really isn't...

[Roy Mustang]

Edit:

[Atria35]

14/15. Not too shabby.

Well, I have to say, I thought that it was a good thing to have general questions about religion- after all, America is a country of many nationalities and religions. I would think that everyone should have some general knowledge of other religions (spoken from someone who gets severely annoyed when my friends start knocking other religions without knowing ANYTHING about them).

But it definitely shouldn't have included those law questions. While important, it's not direct religious knowledge.

[TheSubtleDoctor]

While Traditional Catholicism does not teach that it is symbolic, it also does not teach that it actually becomes the body and blood of Christ. Rather, it adopts ideas from Greek philosophy (as Augustine and Aquinas essentially Christianized Plato and Aristotle, respectively) regarding the idea, I think, of Plato's forms. With there being a perfect form of everything that exists.

And so it is not the blood and body of Christ materially, but rather they are the immaterial "essence" of Christ (This is more than just a "symbol"!). This may not be what is exactly taught nowadays, but that is what transubstantiation originally was.

Anyone, please supplement/correct me if I'm like... wrong or anything. XD

Yeah, I think you're a bit mixed up, MSP =).

It is by the conversion of the bread and wine into Christ's body and blood that Christ becomes present in this sacrament.

While you are correct that many of the Church Fathers adopted the language/distinctions/ontology of Plato or Aristotle (you can't really do both ontologies at once), the notion of transubstantiation is an idea unique to Christendom.

The language of what is going on when the bread and wine transform into a new substance, namely Christ's body and blood, is the language of Aristotle, not Plato. In an Aristotelian ontology, there are substances (particular "this"s) and properties (things that inhere in those substances but are not themselves substances...like redness or tallness). A substance is a combination of matter and form, matter being just the sensible material stuffs and form being a goal-directed, matter-organizing principle (if pressed for an analogous concept, I'd say the genetic code). For instance, the substance man is a combination of body (matter) and soul (form). Transubstantiation involves the form of the bread and wine mysteriously changing into the form of Christ's body and blood. Materially, that is, to the senses, the bread and wine remain as they are.

Again, this kind of process is an innovation upon Aristotle not an idea borrowed from him.

[F.M Disciple]

I just scored 14/15 I screwed up on the last question.

[Dante]

I think they should of made the poll and asked if Christians that watch anime score better then average .

[Peanut]

I think they should of made the poll and asked if Christians that watch anime score better then average .

I would push for this if it wasn't for the fact that we've been exposed to the article and its results before taking the test...so yeah...that kind of mixes things up.

[knightlee]

In answer to the question about Catholics and the Eucharist:

Catholic teaching states that the Eucharist is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ in its substance, while the outward appearances of the Eucharist (its accident) remains the same. So, any practicing Catholic who is faithful to the Magisterium, believes that the Holy Eucharist is the selfsame Christ that died on Calvary.

...And I just realized that I basically repeated what the Subtle Doctor said. Woops. x_x

14 out of 15 correct. I forgot that the Jew's Sabbath begins on a Friday.
Honestly though, that quiz felt more like it belonged on Quizilla.

[Yamamaya]

Catholics not knowing about their own teachings regarding the Eucharist surprises me. Although it's possible they surveyed people who are "culturally Catholic."

I did this test a while back. I got 14/15. Not too shabby. The test could use some tweeking though. Some of those questions were purely political or historical. I thought this was a study on religion, not religious history. They should have stuck entirely with teachings of various religions.

The only way a Christian would know about the names of various Hindu gods would be if they studied it for themselves. Their pastor isn't going to tell them, and many Christians don't feel a need to study the other religions in the world which I find a tad sad.

I'm an Adventist which is often thrown together with Mormonism and JWs(even though we're a lot different). My denomination does focus a lot on education so I guess that explains why I did better on the test(maybe).

[Radical Dreamer]

The only way a Christian would know about the names of various Hindu gods would be if they studied it for themselves. Their pastor isn't going to tell them, and many Christians don't feel a need to study the other religions in the world which I find a tad sad.

This isn't entirely true, I wouldn't say. It doesn't take a lot of digging to find out that Shiva is a Hindi god; I've read articles on the subject in Time Magazine or something before. I haven't personally studied the Hindu religion, but there are some various things you can pick up just from living in a society like America's, with so many different races and religions living in one place. And I'm not exactly living in a fountain of cultural/religious variation in the southeast. XD

Also, because I didn't realize I hadn't posted in this thread previously, I took this quiz last month sometime and got 15/15. XD

[Peanut]

Some of those questions were purely political or historical. I thought this was a study on religion, not religious history. They should have stuck entirely with teachings of various religions.

You bring up some good points but I have to heavily disagree with you on this. Part of the reason is, growing up in what would be considered Evangelical denominations, I've heard my share of messages that bring political topics like these into the message. High on the list is prayer in schools and I just kind of found out about the laws revolving around teaching the Bible because we actually studied some stories from it in my 9th grade English class. As for the history part, we need to remember that Christianity is a very historical religion and that history doesn't really end after the Apostles die. There is a lot we can learn from the history of the Church that gives us an understanding of what we believe and why we believe it. When it comes to the Reformation, I think just about anyone who lives in the west (Christian or non) should at least be able to recognize the name of Martin Luther. This is, after all, one of the biggest events in Western History so, not knowing its major figure, is kind of a bad commentary on our education system.

The only way a Christian would know about the names of various Hindu gods would be if they studied it for themselves. Their pastor isn't going to tell them, and many Christians don't feel a need to study the other religions in the world which I find a tad sad.

I agree with both you and Corrie if that makes sense. It's true that we should be able to identify certain deities just by living in our culture however, if Christians can't recognize them it really doesn't say anything about the quality of our pastors. We can wish that our pastors would be expert history teachers, political analysts, world religion scholars, philosophers, and theologians in one, neat package but if they aren't it really isn't that big of a deal. So, really the questions on the Bible and Christianity (and maybe politics) are relevant to analyzing American Pastors as a whole. Clearly, they need to improve in some denominations however Evangelicals seem to be doing just fine. Others have work to do...

[Yamamaya]

You bring up some good points but I have to heavily disagree with you on this. Part of the reason is, growing up in what would be considered Evangelical denominations, I've heard my share of messages that bring political topics like these into the message. High on the list is prayer in schools and I just kind of found out about the laws revolving around teaching the Bible because we actually studied some stories from it in my 9th grade English class. As for the history part, we need to remember that Christianity is a very historical religion and that history doesn't really end after the Apostles die. There is a lot we can learn from the history of the Church that gives us an understanding of what we believe and why we believe it. When it comes to the Reformation, I think just about anyone who lives in the west (Christian or non) should at least be able to recognize the name of Martin Luther. This is, after all, one of the biggest events in Western History so, not knowing its major figure, is kind of a bad commentary on our education system

That's a fair assessment. You can learn a lot about politics and religion just by watching the news and the issues some politicians both Democrats and Republicans bring up during election season. In fact I was just watching the KET documentary God in America which talked about the controversial Supreme Court decision to "ban prayer in school." I just thought the pew study should have been more focused on theology rather than history. It's more a matter of personal preference though.

I agree with both you and Corrie if that makes sense. It's true that we should be able to identify certain deities just by living in our culture however, if Christians can't recognize them it really doesn't say anything about the quality of our pastors. We can wish that our pastors would be expert history teachers, political analysts, world religion scholars, philosophers, and theologians in one, neat package but if they aren't it really isn't that big of a deal. So, really the questions on the Bible and Christianity (and maybe politics) are relevant to analyzing American Pastors as a whole. Clearly, they need to improve in some denominations however Evangelicals seem to be doing just fine. Others have work to do...

I never said our pastors are bad because they don't teach us about other religions. That's not their job. It's the job of individuals to choose to educate themselves about other religions(this is something I need to improve on as well). This includes religions such as Islam. Many books bring up the violent past of Islam and some of their questionable teachings. While this is all well and good, we should not rely entirely on opinion pieces to determine our understanding of a religion.

I would say one reason why Americans may not have as much knowledge about religion is because of the general non denominational trend in America(which was kind of an offspring of the Church of Christ movement). The focus is more on the main doctrines of Christianity rather than other sub issues like Calvanism vs Arminism vs Universalism and so forth(of course this doesn't include everyone. I know a lot of people who love to debate this issue).

[Nate]

Many books bring up the violent past of Islam and some of their questionable teachings. While this is all well and good

No, it isn't well and good, any more than it's well and good to bring up the violent past of Christianity and some of their questionable teachings.

I swear if this turns into an Islam bashing/hate thread I'm going to be so mad.

[Radical Dreamer]

I swear if this turns into an Islam bashing/hate thread I'm going to be so mad.

I would really prefer it if we could keep things civil, and since this thread isn't about bashing other religions, I'm going to ask that we keep it that way, please.

[TopazRaven]

Ah, I only got 11 out of 15, so 73%. *Shame.* I still have a lot to learn I guess. In least I answered all of the bible questions right! I ran into more trouble when it came to the questions involving law and well...people outside of the bible. The only one of them I got right was that Mother Thersea was Catholic. *Facepalm.* Fun quiz though!