The new Pew Forum Poll on religious knowledge in the U.S. is out and generating comments at different blogs. The general theme is how ignorant Americans are. But any American can take a sample quiz and see whether they are that dumb. I took it and it turns out I am smart.
I can’t say that this will send me out in search of a beer to chug or a co-ed to kiss. The questions did not seem all that difficult.
What I do find interesting is the answers on which Americans stumbled the most. Coming in with only 11% (average) correct answers was: “Which one of these preachers participated in the period of religious activity known as the First Great Awakening?” Jonathan Edwards, Billy Graham, or Charles Finney. Surprisingly, those who identified themselves as evangelical only got the question right 15% of the time. (Hey, if evangelicals actually studied history would they still be evangelical?)
Next in difficulty was the following: ” According to rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, is a public school teacher permitted to read from the Bible as an example of literature, or not?” Yes, permitted or No, not permitted. Americans gave correct answers only 23% of the time. (Evangelicals answered it correctly by a rate of 26%; Jewish Americans scored the best with 42%.) This would seem to indicate that the legal difference between teaching about religion and indoctrination is a distinction lost on many Americans.
Finally, the fifth most difficult question (one point behind a question on Job and two points behind another on Hinduism) was this: “Which of the following best describes the Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for Communion?” The bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus Christ or
The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Here evangelicals scored as well as Mormons (40%), with White Roman Catholics (59%) and Hispanic Roman Catholics (47%) pushing up the averages sufficiently so that 40% of all Americans answered the question correctly.
Rather than revealing how dumb Americans are, these questions suggest that Christians in the U.S. understand an important point of doctrine and practice much better than a fact from church history or the reasons behind a Supreme Court decision. Again, the questions are not on the order of rocket science, but I am somewhat heartened to see that a majority of Roman Catholics and Protestants in America are not ignorant of one of the major points of contention at the time of the Reformation. Maybe Protestantism still lives. (And who says Old Life is always negative?)
Old Life 
I thought it was interesting that only Jews scored higher than atheists and agnostics. I also wonder if the Mormons (3rd highest score) scored higher than Protestants and Catholics is due to their rigorous catechetical training and their high participation among their young men on the 2 year missions.
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Typo – “wonder if the reason…”
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Greetings from your fellow religious genius (at least according to PEW).
It is worth noting that such surveys are quite misleading when groups are compared to one another. Minority groups that require self-selection naturally produce a more thoughtful subgroup. The lazy and dim witted simply default to “Christian” and, if pushed, to “Protestant” or “Catholic”.
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Oh, my mensa and grammar-challenged brethren, having gotten them all correct, I’m apparently smarter than 3,000 people as well. What I found most telling was what most seemed to know, the perils of teachers praying in public school.
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I got all those right too. Darryl, interesting take on the results. I hadn’t thought about it that way. Thanks for the other perspective (see, Frame’s perspectivalism is a good thing!)
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Paul, I believe the word perspective antedates perspectivalism.
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Darryl, yes, you are right here too. The word perspective does indeed antedate the word perspectivalism.
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It is a bit disconcerting how many people appear to believe that reading the Bible as an example of literature isn’t permitted in public school.
If that’s the case, how are we ever going to get the Ten Commandments posted in all public schools? (joking)
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I only got one wrong – but I bet that makes me dumb in this group.
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A double English Language/American Literature major at a public university, the only thing I vividly recall from my “Bible as Literature” course was the evangelical fellow who daily ignored the instructor’s opening speech about how it wasn’t a forum for religious disputation or proselytizing.
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Boy, if I only had a pretzel for every time I’ve been proselytised.
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I would be surprised if most evangelicals even knew who Finney and Edwards were.
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Edwards was the guy with clippers in place of hands. Duh!
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DGH: I read this article with some interest. Do you agree with his premise?
“In the 19th century, Protestants dominated America numerically. They split their political allegiance between “liturgicals,” who backed the Democrats, and “pietists,” who supported the Whigs and their successors, the Republicans.”
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Jeff, the difference between pietist and liturgical Protestants was the basis for my book, The Lost Soul of American Protestantism.
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Darryl, so if you had been surveyed by phone, which group would you have identified with?
I’m torn between the evangelical protestant and the mainline protestant. As a staunch OP I shy away from mainline, but I see how the old PTS/WTS identification with evangelicals is problematic these days. But in these limited circumstances, I would probably opt for evangelical protestant. Oh, of course I’m “white” – to place myself in the category of America’s obsession.
-=Cris=-
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Cris, given my Gravatar identity, I’d say black Protestant.
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Darryl – Funny. On that line of thought, I might call myself “Black Irish”*, given that I like Bob Marley’s music almost as much as Irish & Scottish music. But I guess the phrase I was looking for in the original question is “Machen’s Warrior Children.” I’ll gladly take that label.
* don’t anybody freak out, the phrase refers to inhabitants o’ the Emerald Isle with dark brown or black hair color. I learned the phrase from friends at the Philadelphia Ceili Group.
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