Herein Lies Our Challenge
Tuesday, September 28, 2010 at 4:34PM From the Pew Forum:
Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.
On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education.
Reader Comments (3)
The religious pluralism of Canada is much more entrenched. This is an American survey. I bet any Canadian evangelical would blow any atheist, agnostic, Jew or Mormon out of the water on such a survey!
DarrylThis isn't surprising to me. I've worked on my agnosticism and that required thinking through the major religions. I don't think you come to agnosticism by not thinking. You get there by thinking through the tough questions and realizing the existence of God is completely irrelevant.That's not to say those who have faith don't think, but the majority of Christians I come in contact with haven't thought about the or faith. It's more cultural and programmatic then reality for them.Rob
This may be a lag effect of Christendom in North America. Many people particularly in the US still self-identify as "Christian" merely by default - they may be utterly apathetic about religion, but that's what they were told they were by parents or grandparents.