The United States is one of the most religious places on earth,
but it is also a nation of shocking religious illiteracy. Only 10
percent of American teenagers can name all five major world
religions and 15 percent cannot name any. Nearly two-thirds of
Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most
of life's basic questions, yet only half of American adults can
name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name
the first book of the Bible.
Despite this lack of basic knowledge, politicians and pundits
continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric
whose meanings are missed--or misinterpreted--by the vast majority
of Americans.
"We have a major civic problem on our hands," says religion
scholar Stephen Prothero. He makes the provocative case that to
remedy this problem, we should return to teaching religion in the
public schools. Alongside "reading, writing, and arithmetic,"
religion ought to become the "Fourth R" of American education.
Many believe that America's descent into religious illiteracy
was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on
banishing religion from the public square. Prothero reveals that
this is a profound misunderstanding. "In one of the great ironies
of American religious history," Prothero writes, "it was the
nation's most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road
to religious illiteracy. Just how that happened is one of the
stories this book has to tell."
Prothero avoids the trap of religious relativism by addressing
both the core tenets of the world's major religions "and" the real
differences among them. Complete with a dictionary of the key
beliefs, characters, and stories of Christianity, Islam, and other
religions, "Religious Literacy" reveals what every American needs
to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges
facing this country today.
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