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 