The headlines this week were bold: "Americans Don't Know Much About Religion"; "Atheists Know More About Religion Than Believers"; "Basic Religious Test Stumps Most Americans."
Eh? Did these writers read the survey these articles were based on? The Pew Forum survey on religious knowledge in America contained a number of revelations and surprises, but few were covered in the initial articles. After reading the actual results, here are four important truths about Americans and God.
1) Americans know more about religion than almost any other topic.
For starters, the 3,412 people polled for this study are not exactly students of history. The first substantive question respondents were asked was, "Can you tell me the name of the vice president of the United States?" Only 59% answered correctly. The same meager number knew what antibiotics do, and an even smaller number could correctly name the New Deal as the signature program of FDR. So as a baseline: These people were not very knowledgeable about the world in general.
By contrast, their answers about religion seemed downright Nobel-worthy. Three-quarters knew the Jewish Sabbath falls on Saturday; 68 percent knew the Constitution forbids establishing religion; 63 percent knew Genesis is the first book of the Bible; and the same number who knew who Joe Biden was knew the Quran is the holy book of Islam. Americans are religious savants.
2) The most popular religious figure in America is Moses.
In my book America's Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America, I explore how Moses became the defining figure of American history. The pilgrims quoted his story; Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson proposed that he be on the U.S. seal; the Statue of Liberty and Superman were modeled after him; every American president from Washington to Lincoln to Reagan to Obama was shaped by his story.
This Pew survey proves that Americans' love affair with the superhero of the Bible continues. Asked about various figures from the Bible -- Jesus, Job, Moses, and Abraham -- more Americans knew about Moses than the others. And quizzed about a number of biblical stories, including the Gospels, Americans knew more about the Ten Commandments than the rest of those prominent stories. Moses is the most beloved religious figure in America today.
3) Believers still dominate in America; atheists are not gaining ground.
Despite a decade in which evangelical non-believers have driven the national conversation about faith, the number of atheists is still minuscule in America. Only 6 percent of respondents said they don't believe in God, with another 1 percent saying they didn't know. By contrast, 69 percent said they were absolutely certain God exists, and another 17 percent said they were fairly certain.
But wiping out another stereotype, these believers are not particularly dogmatic. Only a third said the Bible should be taken literally, and asked how often they attend religious services, by far the largest tally said a few times a year, if at all. Americans are by and large casual, non-ideological, benign believers.
4) Americans know as much about other religions as they know about their own.
It was common to read this survey as saying Americans are ignorant about other faiths, and there is evidence to support this claim. Only 38 percent knew that Vishnu and Shiva are central figures in Hinduism. Only 36 percent knew that nirvana is a state of being free from suffering and is an aim of Buddhism. Only 27 percent knew that Indonesia contains mostly Muslims. But since when is the religious makeup of Jakarta the standard for religious literacy?
Consider these statistics: Two-thirds knew that India is predominantly Hindu. Seven in ten knew that Pakistan is predominantly Muslim. Half knew that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist, and 82 percent knew that Mother Teresa was Catholic. Amazingly, more knew Ramadan is the holy month of Islam than knew who wrote Moby Dick. All in all, Americans score fairly well on their religious knowledge of the rest of the world.
For decades, surveys have shown that Americans' knowledge of basic math, science, and history is appallingly low. The real headline coming out of this week's survey on God in America is that our knowledge of religion is not as bad as other subjects, and is arguably stronger. Considering that we are engaged in two wars in Muslim countries in the Middle East, as well as an economic transformation that brings us into closer business relationships with Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucians across Asia, it's safe to say that our awareness of different religious traditions -- and our ability to coexist with them -- may become a key national security advantage in years to come.
Bruce Feiler is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including Walking the Bible, Abraham, and Where God Was Born. His book America's Prophet: How the Story of Moses Shaped America has just been released in paperback.
Follow Bruce Feiler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/brucefeiler
Marilyn Mellowes: 'God in America:' A House Divided Twice (VIDEO)
U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey - Pew Research Center
Pew Forum Religious Knowledge Survey: Atheists, Agnostics Score ...
"Not only was Christianity - or Judaism, or the Ten Commandments - not a part of the foundation of British and American common law, Jefferson noted, but those who were suggesting it was were promoting a lie that any person familiar with the commonly-known history of England would recognize as absurd." Letter to Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
THAT'S WHY MOST OF THEM ARE SO UNBELIEVABILITY IGNORANT.... THEY'RE SO FAR BEHIND THE CURVE IT LOOKS STRAIGHT TO THEM.
"[O]ur knowledge of religion is not as bad as other subjects, and is arguably stronger... [O]ur awareness of different religious traditions -- and our ability to coexist with them -- may become a key national security advantage in years to come."
We're supposed to be HAPPY that the people surveyed were even LESS likely to be able to identify antibiotics as medicines to kill bacteria, and Joe Biden as the Vice President of the United States -- because, hey, religion is the MOST important subject?
Johnny is a straight-D student -- except he's getting a C in religious studies, so no worries. Seriously?
Feiler expresses an apparent pleasure at the relatively small number of non-believers in America:
"Despite a decade in which evangelical non-believers have driven the national conversation about faith, the number of atheists is still miniscule in America."
First, the assertion that non-believers have governed America's religious thought to any degree, at any time in recent history, is so far off-base that I don't know where to begin.
Meanwhile: NON-BELIEVERS are the group of Americans who scored the HIGHEST on the Pew Research religion quiz. If knowledge of religion is so crucial to our country's future, why would you celebrate the lack of non-believers? They know religion better than the religious people do!
There is a far greater problem with the practicers, uses, and abuses of religion than whether or not adherents can parrot back statements about theirs or other's religions. That problem is language based. Much of most religions is metaphoric, symbolic, meant to affect the emotions and imagination more than to reflect any externally provable reality.
There are large numbers of people in many religions, including, and possibly especially in American Christianity, who do not recognize the metaphoric nature of their religion and who seek, even insist upon, a normal reality-based explanation for what is taught in their holy books and church practices.
If one reads The Pentateuch and Haftorahs, one can easily ascertain that much of the "history" given therein is not intended as history, but as metaphor. It is not necessary to justify the creation in seven days, nor any of the numbers given there as ages of individuals nor of historical periods.
The King James Bible is a work of ineffable and sparking beauty, scripture as poetry, as scripture began and is intended. It ought not, particularly the Pentateuch, (1st five books/ Old Testament) be taken literally in almost any measure. Yet it becomes the authority by which people, mainly in the "fundamentalist" community, tend to oppose and oppress others often in very real, even life and death terms.
Many fundamentalist Christians continue to fight unwinnable and irresponsible rhetorical battles attempting to justify metaphor and reality, and sometimes use their as beliefs as weapons to harm others or their beliefs.
It is the metaphorical and symbolic aspects of religion that raise one's awareness to spirituality. The sad fact is that when one dwells upon the struggle to make the justification between the real and the spiritual, one seals oneself off from the spiritual by aligning with its opposite. When one insists that the word in the holy book - intended as metaphor - must necessarily be taken as literal, one dooms oneself to spiritual ignorance.
When one removes the metaphor, the magic of spirituality is cloaked and hidden. The framework of the fundamentalist/literalist message is its coffin.
All religion was once spoken by poets. The poet was a spiritual equal to the shaman, using words and stories as the practice and delivery.
The heart of poetry is metaphor.
Not to belittle the author's point, but that there is a more important aim to take.
Peace, best wishes.
Second, does it not seem somewhat of a bad idea to (supposedly) provide reading material to what were primarily uneducated nomads, that contains declarative such as stoning to death adulteresses (not their male counterparts, of course), sacrificing ones own children, and keeping slaves. If indeed these are metaphorical - how would an illiterate make that judgment? What metaphor is to be gleaned from slaying a woman because of adultery and not a man? I am no god, but it seems like a silly idea to even run the risk of having people kill each other over a metaphor, let alone leave it to perpetuate through thousands of years of mass murder, bigotry, sexism and racism, all in its name.
As for the 'sparking beauty' of the King James bible - I similarly find that when I ignore the horrendous carnage and mass murder documented in texts regarding the Crusades, all we are left with is a poetic story about brave men traveling to far-away lands on horseback with beaming smiles on their faces. Metaphorically speaking, of course.
I had no intent to say everything in the Pentateuch was metaphor, but, to quote myself, "much" of it was. Perhaps that was not strongly enough worded.
I certainly never said, to quote you here, "everything in the Bible" was metaphoric.
As to where one finds indications of metaphor (in anything), when statements or descriptions made fly in the face of common sense and reasoning, we are likely entering metaphor. When impossible comparisons are made, saying that one thing "is" another when it clearly is not, we are in the land of metaphor.
In that sense any competent reader ought be able to recognize metaphor. It is taught in our country from the fifth grade forward.
I said at the end of my text that all religion was once spoken by poets, and metaphor is at the heart of poetry. These stories, particularly the ones in the Pentateuch, were spoken as poetry for very long periods of time before they were written or read. Thus one would expect to find metaphor in them.
I speak of "stories" rather than of "laws" or "rules." The laws and rules in the Pentateuch, particularly in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, are indeed intended to be taken literally, and applied physically.
Where do we find express statements that metaphor is intended? Here's an example from The Pentateuch (Samuel, XXII, 9):
Smoke arose in his nostrils,
And fire out of his mouth did devour;
Coals flamed forth from him.
From the Haftora for that verse:
The startling boldness of the language will be intelligible if the distinctive character of Hebrew symbolism is borne in mind. It is no "gross anthropomorphism," for the Psalmist did not intend that the mind's eye should shape his figures in concrete form. His aim is vividly to express the manifestation of the wrath of God, and he does so in figures which are intended to remain as purely mental conceptions, not to be realized as though God appeared in any visible shape. (My emphasis: bold)
There are numerous such examples throughout the Pentateuch, indeed throughout much of the Christian Bible, and most other religious texts. Religion is by its very nature prone to metaphor.
A bad idea to express violent, brutal and bloody actions, even to exhort and command them, to "primarily uneducated nomads" ? Indeed, that is exactly what was done (originally verbally, later in text), and if we substitute poorly educated moderns for the nomads, is still being done.
In regard to descriptions of the Crusades, the aim of religion and metaphor is not to reduce and diminish text nor the effect of the descriptions therein, but to heighten and elucidate them further. The purpose and use of poetry is and has always been to infuse the reader or listener with meaning and thus enlighten them.
Peace, best wishes.
But if that is the case, then atheists are religious and religious people are atheists. And if so, well, the discussion continues until everyone is one or the other.
And this is good for America how?
He said they were even worse in non-religious subjects.