How well do Americans know about religion?
America is supposed to be a very religious nation, right? That is certainly the perception held by many Europeans, so I am told; and within America itself, religious references are rampant and self-proclaimed religious affiliations quite high.
One of my fellow Interfaith Council board members recently brought an article to my attention that I found to be quite surprising. The premise of the article is that religiousity is no indication of awareness. A survey was administerd by the independent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and the results yielded a deficiency with regards to some of the most basic religious questions. Not only was there a lack of awareness about other religious traditions– understandable enough– but knowledge was often not present within the questionees’ own proclaimed traditions. According to the survey, those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, with Jews and Mormons following.
You can read the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html?_r=1#
Also, I would encourage you to take the quiz yourself at: http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/index.php?
This quiz is comprised of 15 questions that are a sample subset of the original 32 administered in the survey.
