Religious Illiteracy

In my Internet wanderings, I discovered this USA TODAY story about a new book, Religious Literacy, What Every American Needs to Know, by Stephen Prothero. As chairman of the religion department at Boston University, he is aware of how culturally illiterate we are about core beliefs, sacred stories, and symbols of Christianity and other world religions. To prove this he includes a test that dramatically makes his point. He contends that such ignorance is dangerous to our democracy because ill-informed citizens make poor choices as they set the course of the country. This article includes other interesting comments about the need for public schools to offer religion as part of their curriculum. Although I find these thoughts compelling, I feel that we also need to take more seriously the teaching of religion in our churches and homes. I wonder how many in our congregation could pass Prothero’s test?