Religiously Illiterate America

Two new interesting Pew Forum studies have recently been released. The first is a really useful interactive graph which illustrates controversial battles over the building of 35 mosques in the U.S. in the past 2 years. Aziz over at City of Brass made an interesting point on the growth of mosque constructions. In 2000, there were 1200 Masjids (or Mosques) in the U.S., now there are roughly 1900 at a growth of 6% a year. If Muslims are taking over America they're pretty lousy at it.

 The second survey is disheartening. Atheists and agnostics are among the most religiously knowledgeable. Click here for the number breakdown. The internets is a buzz with this recent report. I'm a bit late jumping on the bandwagon but I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents. The questions were simple, which is why I found the results so disappointing. Anyone who has taken a World Religions class at a community college could have answered all the questions correctly. Don't believe me? Then take the quiz to see where you stand in comparison with your fellow Americans. I haven't nor do I make it a habit of reading any evangelical blogs but I can guess their response to the survey. A "Who cares?" attitude about other faiths is exactly what caused Christians to score lower on the survey because they already know what they believe is true. What's worse is that roughly half of protestants could not correctly identify Martin Luther and his writings as inspiring the Reformation. I can understand walling yourself off from other religions to protect from "the taint" of their sinfulness, but missing questions about your own faith screams that we are less religiously literate than we actually portray ourselves.

I understand most people don't have the time to study other religions, unless that's what you do for a living or a hobby, but if anything this survey should be very humbling. There is a LOT we don't know about each other, a LOT. To assume that Muslims want to impose Sharia Law (thereby destroying the very religious freedom they have come to love and embrace as Americans) or that Buddhist worship themselves plays to our fears rooted in our lack of knowledge. We don't know anything about "Them" but this is what I've heard... We say we want to love our neighbor, but how can we love them without getting to know them? I am more concerned with removing fear and ignorance about our neighbor than with being religiously literate, BUT I believe this is only possible through educating ourselves. Sadly, most people of faith will only access material deemed acceptable by their religious view. A conservative Christian is more likely to read a book about Islam written by a fellow Christian than actually reading the Qur'an itself. Outsiders, then, are filtered through a water-downed perspective which often times scarcely resembles the original. This is why I avoid apologetic material of any religious cloth, apologetics exist only to defend their own point of view. Frankly, most people don't care to be religiously literate, but seeing that a good chunk of the world follows a certain religious view it's probably not a bad idea to pick up a $10 Intro to World Religions book.