What we don't know about religion can hurt us
It's true that U.S. schools can't get involved in the practice of religion. But there's no law against teaching world religion as a subject, something Americans could use, according to a recent Pew Forum study.
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As a kid I had a bothersome allergy to insect bites and stings. A tiny gnat could make my eyes swell shut. A yellowjacket’s sting would leave me with hives over half my body for days.
So, I got to know the enemy. I studied and collected insects. For a time, while a biology major in college, I was even curator of the school’s insect collection.
Perhaps it is some such logic that results in atheists and agnostics in America knowing the most about religion, at least according to a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. I found insects both fascinating and dangerous, which I suspect is the way some of the non-religious feel about religion.
According to the recent Pew survey of 3,400 Americans, we Americans don’t know a lot about religion. Among Americans who are religious, Jews and Mormons do better than others, coming in just after the atheists and agnostics. This also makes sense according to the “know the enemy” theory, as both Jews and Mormons have been up against it, at times, in (once) Christian America.
On the Pew Survey, white evangelical Protestants got just more than half of the 32 questions right. White mainline Protestants didn’t even get half. By most grading standards both crowds failed miserably. Moreover, as a general population our religious literacy is quite low.
Does it matter? What does the Pew study really tell us?
It tells us that the Pew Forum people have gotten quite good at leveraging media attention and turning studies that might be a sleep aid into something almost sensational.
One thing the study probably also tells us is that for most people who are believers, it’s not really about religion. It’s about God. It’s about the experience of a higher power, a power not their own. Rice University sociologist, Michael Lindsay, made a similar point, noting, “This study gives convincing proof that Americans may be deeply committed to faith, but that commitment comes most from the heart, not the head.”
That said, and acknowledging that one could probably quibble with the Pew Survey questions, the Pew Survey tells us that we have a long ways to go in being ready to be thoughtful citizens of a religiously pluralistic society and world.
Part of the blame does fall to churches and other religious congregations, which need to do a better job of helping people understand not only their own religion but the religions of their neighbors as well. Learning something about the faith of our local and global neighbors should be one form of “loving thy neighbor as thyself.”
A larger share of the blame falls on education. While some high schools and colleges have good curricula for the study of religion, too often the treatment is minimal or even non-existent. Sometimes schools are “religion-free zones,” which they should be in one sense, and not in another.
When it comes to teaching how to be religious in a particular way, or to practice a particular faith, that is for sure not the job of public schools. However, I would argue that it is the job of public education to teach about religions, in the same way they teach about other subjects of human activity.
But we seem to have a hard time making that distinction between teaching how and teaching about. The result is that sometimes religion is banished altogether from the classroom. The Pew study points to the problem. Only one-fourth of respondents knew that public schools are able to teach about religion, while 90% understood that prayer in public schools is forbidden. For fear of the latter, we have overlooked the former.
What we don’t know about religion does matter. It has something to do with 25% of Americans mistakenly believing the President is a Muslim. It has something to do with a pastor planning a Koran burning. It figures in the difficulty American policymakers had in understanding the significance of Shi’a and Sunni Islam in Iraq. It has something to do with sweeping oversimplifications that declare, “Islam is a religion of peace,” or “Islam is a religion of war.” Most religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, are religions of both, depending on the time and circumstances.
Teaching about religion as a subject of human activity and inquiry is mainly an educational task, one that primarily falls to public schools, colleges, and universities.
That we’re not as well informed as we need to be to live in a religiously pluralistic world should not be entirely surprising. It is only in the last 40-plus years that America has become a much more religiously diverse nation, since the change of immigration policies in 1965. And contrary to the academic consensus of 50 years ago, which anticipated that religion would by now have vanished in the march of secularism, religion continues to play a significant role here and across the globe. Let’s hope the Pew Survey will encourage us to become better prepared to live in a religiously pluralistic world and to get to know our neighbors of other faiths.
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Oct 5, 7:39 a.m. Inappropriate
I took the test you linked to over the weekend. I got 14 out of 15. I'm also agnostic.
Growing up, I was well educated in relgious matters. I went to sunday school, I watched I always wanted to believe in something, but I didn't connect with the brand of Christianity I had grown up in. So I researched others: Buddhism, Islam, Unitarian-Universalism, and at the risk of sounding like Christine O'Donnel, Wicca. I never got far in any of them. None of them had what I was looking for, which was basically any evidence that their message was inherently better than anyone else's. Still, my life-long fascination with religion remains.
I wonder if other agnostic individuals had similar experiences.
Posted Tue, Oct 5, 8 a.m. Inappropriate
So are you saying that it is the fault of churches that they not teach their way out of a market? Churches are a business anymore, with few exceptions. Their product, mainly, is a Sunday pep-talk. For this, they drive emotion, enthusiasm, and idealism into the HEARTS of their congregation. They work towards a base emotional feeling, not an intelligent, thought provoking lecture. They do this because this invokes giving at a stronger level. It's football, not chess.
To turn this around to schools is a dangerous proposition. First, who teaches this? My first emotion is that's what private schools are for. But even if it's taught in an unbiased, secular way, it's a slippery slope towards state sanctioning of religion. To me, it's best left to the Collegiate / University level. It's not something that should be dropped on children just as, say, medical school is reduced to the occasional frog dissection in public school.
Of course, you'll see the occasional church go out of their way to teach tolerance (an ongoing theme here apparently), and they may succeed in their way. That's fantastic. It says that, in essence, "we're no more right or wrong than they are" while the other congregation says theirs is the only way. It's a losing battle.
When I see Pat Robertson and Joel O'Steen using their television time to teach about how Jews and Muslims are just as correct as their preaching, then and only then have we turned a corner.
Posted Tue, Oct 5, 10:10 a.m. Inappropriate
It certainly is shocking to see the amount of ignorance that exists on certain topics. That same study you linked threw in a few general knowledge questions and found, among other things, that 59% of Americans know who the Vice President is. I've always been a bit skeptical of those kinds of statistics, not knowing anything about the 41% who evidently doesn't know, but I probably won't invest the effort required to study the survey's methodology.
It's hard to think of a topic that touches more raw nerves than religion in public schools. Regrettably, many school administrators find that the best way to navigate the minefield of controversy is to avoid it. In order to have an effective comparative religion segment in public schools, two equally difficult things are necessary. First, a methodology needs to be developed to insure that the many potential topics are treated fairly. Second, the process needs to incorporate legitimate concerns from the public while protecting its integrity from partisans and parents who want to protect their children from worldly knowledge.
Posted Tue, Oct 5, 1:06 p.m. Inappropriate
I recognized only a few of the religious symbols bit noticed the symbol of a smoking joint was missing. Isn't the pot high Seattle's most popular religion?
Posted Tue, Oct 5, 2:38 p.m. Inappropriate
Ack, I only got 12 out of 15! I am an atheist.
I am all for having comparative religion classes at the high school level. The difficult task would be figuring out what and how to teach, including a balanced curriculum and history.
I am fascinated with the history of religion and the "holy" texts, and find that most religious people I talk with have very little knowledge of these areas. This surprises me to no end.
I find that even evangelical Christians have a "cafeteria" approach to their religion. They seem to just ignore or remain ignorant of what I think of as the problem areas. Large parts of the Bible seem to advocate massacring peoples of other religions.
I have not read the Qur'an, but it is on my list of things to do. It is a sad commentary on our society that I feel nervous buying one--like I will be put on some list!
Posted Tue, Oct 5, 8:25 p.m. Inappropriate
I'm an agnostic and did very well, but then I DID have a course on comparative religion in college.
I too wish people were more knowledgeable, but let's be realistic. IF religion were to be taught in schools, I predict that 90 to 99 percent of the courses would be dedicated to rejecting all religious positions except fundamentalist Christianity. It is NOT worth the risk.
Posted Wed, Oct 6, 3:06 p.m. Inappropriate
Still hard to believe how many folks assume all Christians are of the Pat Robertson variety. It frustrates me greatly when the comment threads are filled with responses to an essay written by an Evangelical Fundamentalist when that's the last thing that an Evangelical Fundamentalist would call Rev. Robinson. Frankly, many of the folks in that camp would dispute Rev. Robinson's Christianity in the first place.
My Point?
I think it's time that the good Reverend had some help!
Mr. Brewster, in keeping with the theme of this column, I would implore you to consider adding several other Religion columnists. For starters, I think it would be wonderful to compare and contrast columns from a Progressive Protestant and a real, live Fundamentalist. Perhaps Rev. Driscoll could join the roster? That would be just a start, however. I would welcome similar writings from a spectrum of local religious leaders. How would a local Imam write about this issue of religious ignorance? A local Rabbi? What about those of the Bhuddist, Hindu or Sikh faiths? Of course, just as Progressive Protestants and Evangelical Fundamentalists are a chasm apart on many things, I am certain that there are great differences within all religions. A Rabbi from a Reform Congregation might have a very different take than one from an Orthodox or Conservative Congregation.
Crosscut, it seems to me, is the perfect forum for such a project. A Northwest Religious Roundtable, so to speak.
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