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发帖数: 40861 | 1 In his 2007 book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know-
And Doesn't, Boston University professor Stephen Prothero claimed, "
Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion."
While he supported his argument with solitary findings from public opinion
polls, he pointed out that at the time of writing his book, there was not a
comprehensive, national survey evaluating religious knowledge among American
adults.
That changed this year, when the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religious
and Public Life developed and administered a nationwide 32-question phone
survey from May 19 - June 6. The survey called on 3,412 Americans to better
gauge a baseline of where Americans stand in knowledge of their own religion
, other religions, and how these religions play out in American history and
the public sphere. Prothero served as an advisor and results and analysis
were released by Pew Research on September 28.
On average, American respondents answered 16 of the 32 questions correctly.
Atheists and agnostics ranked highest in religious knowledge, answering an
average of 20.9 answers correctly. Jews, who answered 20.5 questions
correctly, and Mormons, who averaged 20.3 in correct responses, closely
followed them. Protestants trailed behind with an average of 16 correct
answers, and Catholics came in at the bottom with an average of 14.7 correct
answers. Muslim, Hindus, and Buddhists were surveyed, but their response
numbers in comparison with the other groups were too small to report
statistically significant results.
Twelve of the survey questions focused on Christianity. On average, Mormons
(7.9) and Protestants (7.3) demonstrated the highest levels of knowledge
out of all the groups. Jews (7.9) and atheists/agnostics (7.5) came out
much more strongly in their understanding of world religions, which
accounted for 11 of the survey questions. They were also strongest in
correctly answering questions about the role of religion in public life.
Among the findings, here are some I find particularly interesting:
* 53% of the Protestant respondents couldn’t correctly identify Martin
Luther as the force behind the Protestant Reformation.
* 43% of the Jewish respondents did not know that Maimonides, one of the
most revered rabbis in history, was Jewish.
* 47% of the total respondents knew that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist.
* 38% of the total respondents correctly correlated Vishnu and Shiva
with Hinduism.
* 27% of the total respondents correctly answered that most of Indonesia
’s population is Muslim (the country is also home to the largest Muslim
population in the world).
* 36% of the total respondents correctly answered that comparative
religion classes are allowed in public schools.
* The most common correctly answered question: Do U.S. Supreme Court
rulings allow public school teachers to lead their classes in prayer? 89%
correctly said no.
* The most common incorrectly answered question: Are public school
teachers allowed to use the Bible as an example of literature in a secular
context? 67% incorrectly said no. |
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