Stephen Prothero, Chairman of the Religion Department at Boston University and author of a book just coming out this month, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know, has an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription required) that appears to lay out the themes of his new book. He presents a sobering view of the state of knowledge about religion in general that we should expect of (1) our students and (2) the general public.
For the past two years, I have given students in my introductory religious-studies course at Boston University a religious-literacy quiz. I ask them to list the four Gospels, Roman Catholicism's seven sacraments, and the Ten Commandments. I ask them to name the holy book of Islam. They do not fare well.
In their quizzes, they inform me that Ramadan is a Jewish holiday, that Revelation is one of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, and that Paul led the Israelites on the Exodus out of Egypt. This year I had a Hindu student who couldn't name one Hindu scripture, a Baptist student who didn't know that "Blessed are the poor in spirit" is a Bible quote, and Catholic students unfamiliar with the golden rule. Over the past two years, only 17 percent of my students passed the quiz.
He also articulates some good arguments for why religious illiteracy is a "civic problem":
One might imagine that religious illiteracy is nothing more than a religious problem — a challenge for ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams. But in the United States today, presidents quote from the Bible during their inauguration speeches, members of Congress cite the "Good Samaritan" story in debates over immigration legislation, and politicians of all stripes invoke the Book of Genesis in debates over the environment. So religious ignorance is a civic problem, too.
In an era when the public square is, rightly or wrongly, awash in religious rhetoric, can one really participate fully in public life without knowing something about Christianity and the world's other major religions? Is it possible to decide whether intelligent design is "religious" or "scientific" without some knowledge of religion as well as science? Is it possible to determine whether the effort to yoke Christianity and "family values" makes sense without knowing what sort of "family man" Jesus was? Is it possible to adjudicate between President Bush's description of Islam as a religion of peace and the conviction of many televangelists that Islam is a religion of war, without some basic information about Muhammad and the Quran?
Unfortunately, U.S. citizens today lack this basic religious literacy. As a result, many Americans are too easily swayed by demagogues. Few of us are able to challenge claims made by politicians or pundits about Islam's place in the war on terrorism, or about what the Bible says concerning homosexuality. This ignorance imperils our public life, putting citizens in the thrall of talking heads and effectively transferring power from the Third Estate (the people) to the Fourth (the press).
But he stops short of where I think a lot of these conversations in Catholic universities tend to go, when they take place:
In recent years, George M. Marsden, a historian at the University of Notre Dame, and Warren A. Nord, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have argued for the return of "normative religious teaching" to American colleges and universities. They want professors not only to describe religious traditions but also to weigh in on their vices and virtues. Each of these scholars has also argued that it is essential for students to learn "religious perspectives" in disciplines other than religious studies — to study theological critiques of classical economics and "religious interpretations of history." "There should be room," writes Nord, for both objective analysis of religion and "normative reflection on religion."
What Marsden and Nord seem to want is to make colleges and universities (or pockets of them) into religious places once again — to resurrect the big questions of God, creation, and sin not only in departments of religion but also in courses in philosophy and economics and history and political science. My proposal is more modest and less controversial. I simply want to persuade the lords of American higher education to stop trivializing this subject. There is no reason not to expect from America's future leaders at least minimal religious literacy.
It seems to me that much of the conversation about CLT assumes agreement with the Marsden/Nord approach. Am I wrong? Is there any value to thinking about some of what we are trying to do from the Prothero approach?
