Americans — Not Just Liberals — Have a Religious Literacy Problem
What my students show me about the real problem with religious knowledge in America
Every year I teach students who are surprised to learn that Jesus and Mary appear in the Quran; that Buddhism is historically descended from Hinduism; that virgin birth narratives and flood myths appear in many traditions; that believers in the same religion will exhibit dramatic variation in their beliefs and practices depending on historical and cultural context. Most have never thought to analyze religiosity using psychology or economics.
Instead, the majority of my students — most of whom are white, Protestant Christians from Virginia and the East Coast — are familiar only with the thin slice of modern Christian religion they’ve been exposed to, and are often baffled by religious ways of life that differ from their own. Perhaps the best illustration of this happens when I invite a rabbi in to speak about Judaism. Without fail, the most perplexing aspect of Jewish faith proves to be its lack of a definitive teaching on heaven, and he always fields the same question: “Why would Jews be good if they don’t believe in heaven?”
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