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.
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7 comments:
i scored 13 out of 15. and holding true to the survey, the religious folks here at work scored 6, 12, and 7
Imagine that.
More proof the bible thumpers have no idea what they are talking about.
I am agnostic and I did very well. I think the reason for this is simple. I have studied enough religion to know that I know nothing.
i think it says how closed-minded religious folks can be. frustrating really...
I am an atheist and got all but one correct. Believers will complain about the study's methodology, et. al., but the Pew research simply confirms my empirical observations.
Where do you go to take the survey??
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