It’s clear from media reports that religion is in the spotlight more today than in previous decades, but it seems that a majority of Americans are unprepared to discuss the topic with adequate knowledge.
According to a report in USA Today March 7, Americans would receive an “F” in religion if they were graded on their ability to answer questions correctly. In fact, the newspaper said 60 percent of Americans can’t name five of the Ten Commandments and half of high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were married.
“More and more of our national and international questions are religiously inflected,” Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University and author of the book “Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know – and Doesn’t,” told USA Today. “If you think Sunni and Shia are the same because they’re both Muslim, and you’ve been told Islam is about peace, you won’t understand what’s happening in Iraq.
“If you get into an argument about gay rights or capital punishment and someone claims to quote the Bible or the Quran, do you know it’s so?” he added. “If you want to be involved, you need to know what they’re saying. We’re doomed if we don’t understand what motivates the beliefs and behaviors of the rest of the world.”
Prothero believes all Americans should strive to grasp Bible basics as well as the core beliefs, stories, symbols and heroes of other faiths. To facilitate that goal, he advocates requiring middle school students to take a course in world religions and high school students to take a class on the Bible, USA Today reported.
All college undergraduates should take at least one course in religious studies, Prothero said, and biblical knowledge should be added to lessons on history and literature where it’s relevant.
These days, only 8 percent of public high schools offer an elective Bible course, and some say it’s because schools are afraid to touch the Bible for fear of backlash, even though it is legal to educate students about the Bible in literature and history classes.