{"id":73686,"date":"2010-09-28T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2010\/09\/28\/us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:10:06","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:10:06","slug":"us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications\/","title":{"rendered":"An Overview of the Pew Forum Survey, Results and Implications"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Pew Forum\u2019s Alan Cooperman and Greg Smith, along with Boston University professor and author Stephen Prothero and Krista Tippett of American Public Media, explore key findings from a new Pew Forum survey on how much Americans know about religion<\/a> as part of a panel discussion at a national symposium on religious literacy in Washington, D.C. The symposium, which was held in conjunction with a screening of the upcoming PBS documentary series \u201cGod in America,\u201d was coordinated by WGBH Television in Boston and the Religious Freedom Education Project at the Newseum.<\/p>\n\n

Speakers:<\/strong>\nAlan Cooperman, Associate Director for Research, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life\nGreg Smith, Senior Researcher, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life\nStephen Prothero, Professor, Boston University\nKrista Tippett, Host and Producer, \u201cBeing,\u201d American Public Media<\/p>\n\n

Moderator:<\/strong>\nRay Suarez, Senior Correspondent, PBS NewsHour<\/p>\n\n

Navigate This Transcript:<\/strong>\nSurvey Questions Most Got Right<\/a>\nKnowledge of the Ten Commandments<\/a>\nQuestions on Their Own Faith<\/a>\nRestrictions on Religion in Public Schools<\/a>\nAtheists and Agnostics Most Knowledgeable<\/a>\nQuestions on World Religions<\/a>\nEducation is the Leading Predictor<\/a>\nWhy Religious Illiteracy Matters<\/a>\nProthero: In my class, that\u2019s a D<\/a>\nLooking at the South<\/a>\nLooking at Catholics<\/a><\/p>\n\n

RAY SUAREZ, PBS NEWSHOUR:<\/strong> We\u2019ll set the table for our first discussion \u2013 \u201cU.S. Religious Knowledge\u201d \u2013 with Alan Cooperman, the associate director for research at the Pew Research Center\u2019s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Alan?<\/p>\n\n

ALAN COOPERMAN, PEW FORUM ON RELIGION & PUBLIC LIFE:<\/strong> We know from our past surveys that the United States is a very religious country. Indeed, by some measures, it is the most religious of the world\u2019s rich, industrial countries. Nearly six-in-ten Americans say religion is very important in their lives. That is double, roughly speaking, the percentage in any of the other G-8 countries.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-05<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

But the question arises, how much do Americans actually know about religion? Three years ago, Professor Stephen Prothero, who\u2019s here, wrote a best-selling book, in which he argued that Americans are both deeply religious and profoundly ignorant about religion. At the same time, Professor Prothero lamented that there really wasn\u2019t much hard data available about this, and he noted that researchers \u2013 that would be us \u2013 had put a lot more effort into measuring Americans\u2019 religious beliefs than they had into measuring Americans\u2019 religious knowledge. So in short, three years ago, Steve threw down the gauntlet and we\u2019re picking it up today.<\/p>\n\n

Steve has been a great help in this project. We\u2019re deeply grateful to him and to our other expert advisers \u2013 Marilyn Mellowes of WGBH and John Green of the University of Akron \u2013 as well as to our polling consultant, Mike Mokrzycki. We\u2019ve got some very provocative, in the best sense of that word, results to discuss with you.<\/p>\n\n

But before I do that, I want to acknowledge a couple of very important limitations. First of all, because this is a first-time effort \u2013 never done a survey like this before \u2013 we don\u2019t have any historical data. So we do not try to say anything about whether Americans today are more or less knowledgeable about religion than previous generations of Americans. You can have speculation on that, but we just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n

Second caveat is that we have deliberately abstained from grading the American public with an A, an F or anything in between. We feel we do not have any objective way of determining what the public should know about religion. So this survey is not like a college course that Steve or others might give, where a curriculum has been presented to the American public and now we can test how well the public has done. It\u2019s not like that.<\/p>\n\n

We cannot claim that the questions we asked are necessarily the most important things to know about religion. We do hope that they are not trivial. And we think that they are pretty good indicators of how much Americans know about religion. In total, the survey contained 32 questions designed to test Americans\u2019 religious knowledge. I\u2019m going to show you just a small sample.<\/p>\n\n

Most of them were multiple-choice. About a third were about the Bible and Christianity. Another third or so were about world religions, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and religious geography. A third explored Americans\u2019 knowledge about Mormonism, the meaning of terms such as atheist and agnostic, some historical issues in religion, and religion in public schools.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

So let\u2019s begin, just to give you an introduction to the questions, by starting with a few of the questions that most people got right. These are some of the questions most frequently answered correctly. At least two-thirds of the people surveyed \u2013 3,412 people surveyed \u2013 at least two-thirds got these questions right. Eighty-five percent knew that an atheist is someone who does not believe in God. By the way, 7% confused that term with agnostic and said that an atheist is someone who is unsure whether God exists.<\/p>\n\n

Eighty-two percent know that Mother Teresa was a Catholic. Three percent think she was Jewish. Seventy-two percent know that Moses, and not Job or Elijah or Abraham, led the Biblical exodus from Egypt. Seventy-one percent know that the Bible says Jesus was born in Bethlehem. By the way, a quarter thought he was born in Nazareth or Jerusalem.<\/p>\n\n

About two-thirds of the public knows that the Constitution says that the government shall neither establish a religion nor interfere with the practice of religion. By the way, 18% think the Constitution does not say anything, one way or the other, about religion, and 3% think that the Constitution privileges Christianity. Sixty-eight percent know that most people in Pakistan are Muslim, and not Buddhist, Hindu or Christian.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Now here are some of the things that about half \u2013 roughly speaking \u2013 half the public gets right. To begin with, we asked a question where we gave four statements and we asked, which one is not among the Ten Commandments? Do not commit adultery. Do not steal. Keep the Sabbath holy. Or, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. A little more than half the public knows that the Golden Rule is not among the Ten Commandments. By the way, the most common wrong answer: Keep the Sabbath holy. More than a quarter of Americans think that \u201cKeep the Sabbath holy\u201d is not among the Ten Commandments and that \u201cDo unto others as you would have them do unto you\u201d is.<\/p>\n\n

Fifty-four percent correctly named the Koran when asked to name the Islamic holy book, and 52% know that Ramadan is the Islamic holy month and not the Jewish day of atonement or the Hindu festival of lights. Fifty-one percent know Joseph Smith was a Mormon. Nearly as many know that the Dalai Lama is a Buddhist. Also, almost half know the Jewish Sabbath begins on Friday. The largest single wrong answer to that question was Saturday, although a substantial number also said Sunday \u2013 7% said Sunday; 18% said they didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n

And a little less than half of the public can correctly name, in a non-multiple choice question, an open-ended question, the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-06<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

Finally, here are some of the things that less than a third of the public gets right. Only about a quarter of Americans know that most of the people in the largest Muslim-majority country in the world \u2013 Indonesia \u2013 are Muslim.<\/p>\n\n

Only about one-in-five people understand sola fide<\/em> \u2013 that Protestants and not Catholics teach that salvation comes through faith alone. By the way, 38% attribute this teaching both to Catholicism and to Protestantism. So not too great an understanding of the Reformation here. Jonathan Edwards \u2013 only about one-in-ten Americans can identify Jonathan Edwards as a preacher who participated in the first Great Awakening. Twenty-eight percent named Billy Graham. Billy Graham is old, by the way, but he wasn\u2019t around in 1740. (Laughter)<\/p>\n\n

Now, I\u2019m not sure whether what you\u2019ve seen thus far strikes you as pretty good, pretty terrible. As I said, we abstained from giving the public an A or an F or anything else, and we feel that we have no way, really, of saying whether Americans know more or less about religion than they do about physics or history or geography or politics or sports. But I do think that it\u2019s fair, in particular, to ask how well people do on basic questions about their own faiths.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

The survey finds, not surprisingly, that on specific questions about specific faiths, members of those faiths generally do better than the rest of the public. But on the other hand, we do find that large numbers of Americans are not well-informed about some of the major tenets, practices and history of their own faith tradition. So let\u2019s go through some of those.<\/p>\n\n

For example, we asked, which of the following statements best describes the Catholic Church\u2019s teaching about the bread and wine used for communion? Do the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Christ or does the church teach that the bread and wine are just symbolic of the body and blood of Christ?<\/p>\n\n

Now, of the general public, more than half get this question wrong; just 40% get it right. Catholics do substantially \u2013 maybe I should say trans-substantially (laughter) \u2013 better: 55% of Catholics know that their church teaches that during communion, the bread and wine actually become the real presence of the body and blood of Christ. And Catholics who go to Mass regularly do even better. But still, this question shows that almost half of Catholics do not understand, are not familiar with the church\u2019s teaching on the Eucharist.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-07<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

Judaism \u2013 my people. We also asked, would you tell me if Maimonides was Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Mormon or Hindu? Again, what was the faith of Maimonides? Less than one-in-ten Americans know that Maimonides was a Jew. By the way, one wonders what this would be if there weren\u2019t 25 medical centers named for him. (Laughter.) Jews do a lot better on this question \u2013 57% of Jews get this right. But still, more than four-in-ten Jews in America apparently do not recognize the name and faith of the most venerated rabbi and Torah sage in history.<\/p>\n\n

Protestantism \u2013 we asked the name of the person whose writings and actions inspired the Protestant Reformation. Was it Thomas Aquinas, John Wesley or Martin Luther? Three possibilities on this one. Like the general public, fewer than half of Protestants said Luther. A third of Protestants, by the way, said they didn\u2019t know, and 15% incorrectly named an 18th-century theologian, John Wesley. The Protestants who attend services weekly or more did somewhat better. Still, it\u2019s fewer than half of Protestants in the United States who can identify Martin Luther.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-08<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

This is a tough question, in some respects: Which religious group traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone? About one-in-five Americans correctly answers Protestantism. Protestants themselves do a little bit better, and Protestants who are frequent churchgoers do considerably better. But still, as you see, the vast majority of American Protestants apparently do not recognize sola fide<\/em>, one of the key theological distinctions between Protestantism and Catholicism.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-09<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

The survey also included three questions about restrictions on religion in public schools. Of all the questions in our survey, the single question that the highest percentage of people got right was, according to Supreme Court rulings \u2013 not your own opinion \u2013 according to Supreme Court rulings, is a public school teacher allowed to lead a class in prayer?<\/p>\n\n

Nearly nine out of 10 Americans correctly said no. At the same time, however, one of the questions most often answered incorrectly was whether it is permissible, according to Supreme Court rulings, for public school teachers to read from the Bible as an example of literature. Only 23% of those surveyed know that this is permitted. It\u2019s explicitly permitted by the Supreme Court. Similarly, most people don\u2019t realize that public school teachers can, and in fact do, offer courses comparing the world\u2019s major religions. Only 36% get this correct.<\/p>\n\n

Together, this block of questions suggests to us that many people think that the restrictions on teaching religion in the public schools are stricter than, in reality, they are. Now, I haven\u2019t covered the entire survey by any means, but these are some of the highlights. And as I mentioned at the outset \u2013 and we do need to be humble about this \u2013 we cannot pretend that these questions necessarily reflect the most important things to know about religion.<\/p>\n\n

And we know that we could have made up harder questions or easier questions, but what we can say with some confidence, and even delight, is that the questions we chose did a very good job of differentiating levels of knowledge among U.S. adults because, through a combination of good design and good luck, the overall results are an almost perfect Bell curve.<\/p>\n\n

Of 3,412 people surveyed nationally, only eight people \u2013 they\u2019re probably all here in this room \u2013 only eight people got all 32 answers right. And only six people got all 32 questions wrong. Now, the person largely responsible for that is my colleague, Greg Smith, the head of our survey data team. I\u2019ll turn the mike over to Greg to dig more deeply into these results. (Applause.)<\/p>\n\n

GREG SMITH, PEW FORUM ON RELIGION & PUBLIC LIFE:<\/strong> Good morning. Thank you, Alan. It\u2019s a great pleasure to be here. It\u2019s very exciting to be able to share the findings from this survey with all of you. I\u2019d like to pick up where Alan left off, by considering the survey\u2019s findings, as to the patterns in religious knowledge.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Who knows the most about religion and who knows the least? As has been alluded to, the groups that do best on our survey are atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons. Out of the 32 questions that we asked, atheists and agnostics answered an average of 20.9 questions correctly. Jews answered 20.5 questions correctly, on average. And Mormons got 20.3 questions right, on average.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-01<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

These three top scores are followed by white evangelical Protestants, who answered an average of 17.6 of the survey\u2019s 32 questions correctly. White Catholics and white mainline Protestants each answered about 16 \u2013 about half \u2013 of our questions right. And those who describe their religion as just \u201cnothing in particular\u201d got a little bit more than 15 questions right. Black Protestants answered 13.4 questions right, on average, and Hispanic Catholics \u2013 11.6.<\/p>\n\n

I think it\u2019s fair to say that my colleagues and I, and probably many of you, have been struck by the strong performance of atheists and agnostics on this survey. What might explain their relatively high levels of religious knowledge? I have to say that our data don\u2019t speak directly to this question, but we do know, as I\u2019ll discuss in just a few minutes, that their strong performance is not nearly a function of their higher-than-average levels of educational attainment.<\/p>\n\n

We think, though, that their relatively high levels of religious knowledge may reflect a fair amount of thought and consideration given to religion by people who describe themselves as atheist or agnostic. These are folks who have chosen to identify with a relatively small \u2013 they make up about 4% of the U.S. population \u2013 and a relatively unpopular portion of the U.S. population. We know that very few people were raised as atheists or agnostics. Indeed, our data show that about three-quarters of atheists and agnostics say that they were raised as Christians.<\/p>\n\n

So the very fact that people identify themselves as atheist or agnostic may indicate that they\u2019ve taken a side, so to speak, in the American religious discussion. Their very identification as atheist or agnostic may reflect that they\u2019ve considered and given considerable thought to these matters, and that might be reflected in their high scores.<\/p>\n\n

Another way that you can see this in our data is by comparing atheists and agnostics to those who describe their religion simply as \u201cnothing in particular.\u201d Atheists and agnostics are among the very top scorers on our survey, whereas those who describe their faith simply as \u201cnothing in particular\u201d performed below the national average. So it\u2019s not simply the absence of a connection to a religious group that\u2019s associated with higher knowledge; instead, it\u2019s the presence of this self-identification as an atheist or agnostic. We think that those things might have something to do with this puzzle.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Digging into the data a little bit more deeply, we see that the realm of religious knowledge in which atheists and agnostics and Jews really excel is on the questions that we asked about world religions other than Christianity, including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-02<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

Out of 11 questions in this area, Jews answered an average of 7.9 correctly, and atheists and agnostics answered 7.5 correctly, on average. You can see here that no other group really comes close in this area. Mormons, the next-highest scoring group, get an average of two fewer questions right, out of only 11, compared with atheists and agnostics. White evangelical Protestants, white mainline Protestants and white Catholics all answered fewer than half of the survey\u2019s 11 questions about world religions correctly.<\/p>\n\n

We see a very different pattern on the survey\u2019s 12 questions about the Bible and Christianity. Here, Mormons do best, with 7.9 out of 12 questions answered correctly, on average. And they\u2019re closely followed by white evangelical Protestants. Atheists and agnostics and Jews also get more than half of the Bible and Christianity questions right, but they\u2019re not the very best performers in this area, as they are in so many of the other areas we looked at in the survey.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-03<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

Notice, too, that Black Protestants do better on questions about the Bible and Christianity, relative to other groups, than they do on the full set of 32 religious knowledge items. Black Protestants, white mainline Protestants and white Catholics each answer about a half of the survey\u2019s Bible and Christianity questions correctly, on average.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Now, what are the factors that help to contribute to overall levels of religious knowledge? The survey shows that the No. 1 predictor of how people did on the religious knowledge questions is educational attainment. College graduates get an average of 20.6 of the questions right \u2013 about two-thirds of our total of 32 questions. Those with post-graduate training or post-graduate degrees, who get more than 22 questions right, on average, do even better than those with bachelor\u2019s degrees, who get an average of 19.8 questions right. Those people with some college education but no four-year degree get 17-and-a-half questions right, on average. And those with a high-school education or less get about 13 questions \u2013 about 40% of the total \u2013 right.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-04<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

You can also see that those people with post-graduate training get about twice as many religious knowledge questions right, compared with those who have not completed high school. So educational attainment is a very powerful predictor. It\u2019s, without question, the most powerful factor we examined in shaping people\u2019s overall levels of religious knowledge.<\/p>\n\n

The survey also shows that, beyond overall levels of educational attainment, specific kinds of educational experiences are linked with religious knowledge. The survey asked people who had been to college whether or not they took a religion course while they were there. Those who say they did take a religion course in college answered an average of 22.1 questions right, significantly higher than the 17.9 among people who did go to college but did not take a religion course while they were there.<\/p>\n\n

The survey also asked people what kinds of schools they attended as children \u2013 public or private \u2013 and it asked those who\u2019d been to private school whether they\u2019d gone to a religious private school or a non-religious private school. Now, perhaps as you\u2019d expect, those who attended private school did better on the religious knowledge questions than those who attended public schools, by more than two questions, on average. However, the survey also shows, interestingly, I think, that among those who attended private school, there is no significant difference between those who went to a religious private school and those who attended a secular private school.<\/p>\n\n

Let me also point out one other thing that we really tried to do with this project. In this report, we really wanted to dig below the surface and try to answer the question of what kinds of traits are strongly associated with religious knowledge and which traits seem to be linked with religious knowledge but, in reality, are only tangentially linked, if at all.<\/p>\n\n

In other words, do atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperform other groups in our survey because they\u2019re more educated than members of most religious groups or because they have other traits that are linked with higher levels of religious knowledge? Or is it the case that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons are more knowledgeable than evangelicals, mainline Protestants and Catholics, even after education and other factors are taken into account?<\/p>\n\n

To try to address these kinds of questions, we used a technique called multiple regression analysis. We began with a statistical model that includes a variety of religious and demographic variables, like education, age, gender and race. And it considers the impact of each one of these one at a time, while holding all of the others constant. This produces a picture of how much each factor contributes to religious knowledge, independent of all of the other variables we looked at.<\/p>\n\n

This analysis confirms that educational attainment is, far and away, the single leading predictor of higher religious knowledge, even when you take other things into account. It also shows that men score a little bit better than women, by about 1.4 questions, on average. It shows that whites score better on the religious knowledge test than Blacks and Hispanics. It shows that people who live outside the South do better on our survey than Southerners by about one question, on average. And it shows that the oldest group in the population gets about one fewer question right compared with younger age cohorts.<\/p>\n\n

These analyses also show \u2013 and this is probably the most interesting finding of the survey from my perspective. These analyses also show, as I alluded to earlier, that the strong performance on these questions by atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons is not simply attributable to their educational background or to other of their demographic characteristics. Instead, even after all of these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all other religious groups in our survey.<\/p>\n\n

These three top performers are followed by evangelical Protestants, who, in turn, score better than mainline Protestants, Catholics and those who describe their religion simply as \u201cnothing in particular.\u201d I should also point out, though, that even though atheists and agnostics are among the best performers on the survey, if we look at the population overall, it turns out that people with the highest levels of religious commitment \u2013 those who say that they attend religious services regularly and that religion is very important in their lives. Those with the highest levels of religious commitment do a little bit better on the survey compared with those with medium or low levels of religious commitment.<\/p>\n\n

Now, this might seem contradictory. How can atheists and agnostics be among the top performers on the survey if those with low levels of religious commitment do worse than those with the highest levels of religious commitment? What we have to remember is that atheists and agnostics make up only a small portion of people, even a small portion of people with low levels of religious commitment. There are lots of people in the low- and medium-religious-commitment categories, in other words, who are not themselves atheist or agnostic and who don\u2019t do as well on the religious knowledge questions.<\/p>\n\n

So these are some of the highlights of our survey, some of the highlights of our analysis. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons do best on religious knowledge questions overall. Large numbers of people are unfamiliar even with important aspects of their own faiths. And the public thinks that there are more restrictions on religion in the public schools than is actually the case.<\/p>\n\n

Let me also point out one great new feature that accompanies this project: With this report, we are entering the world of online quizzes<\/a>. You can go to our website and complete a selection of the survey\u2019s questions for yourselves, and you can also see there how your results compare to those for the public overall, as well as to a variety of religious and demographic groups. So with that, I thank you for your attention. I look forward to discussing these findings further. And I will yield the floor.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong>Joining Gregory Smith, whom you just heard from, and Alan Cooperman, are the rest of our panel: Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know <\/em>\u2013 and Doesn\u2019t<\/em>, and a professor of religion at Boston University, and Krista Tippett, host of \u201cBeing\u201d on American Public Media, and the author of Speaking of Faith: Why Religion Matters and How to Talk About It<\/em>, which is a pretty useful thing for the purposes of this morning\u2019s conversation.<\/p>\n\n

At the risk of sounding dismissive, Stephen Prothero, so what? Beyond being able to do well if \u201cJeopardy\u201d is on in the room while you\u2019re doing something else, beyond walking into a church on your travels and, even if you\u2019re not Catholic, seeing a monstrance on the altar and knowing what it is, so what?<\/p>\n\n

You had to commute. You had to put your pants on in the morning. You had to get yourself three meals. You had to worry, perhaps, about other people and whether they were getting their three meals. This, depending on how you look at the numbers, that base of knowledge or lack of knowledge means what to 306 million people\u2019s daily lives?<\/p>\n\n

STEPHEN PROTHERO, BOSTON UNIVERSITY:<\/strong> Well, I think the level of religious education inside these religious communities is very important to each of them. So if you talk to rabbis, they\u2019re concerned about Jewish illiteracy. If you talk to Catholic priests and nuns, they\u2019re concerned about Catholic illiteracy. If you talk to evangelical Christians, they\u2019re concerned about biblical illiteracy in their ranks.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

But the focus of my own writing on this question has been more about the political and civic side. And I think there are two ways in which religious illiteracy matters. One is domestic and one is international.<\/p>\n\n

On the domestic side, we have, now, two religious political parties. We used to have one, until maybe six years ago, or maybe four or maybe two, depending on how you count. But we now have both parties that are trying to link their particular public policy initiatives to the Bible and to Christianity in particular, and then, more broadly, to religion.<\/p>\n\n

So without an understanding of Christianity and the Bible, the American public is handicapped in terms of evaluating whether it makes sense, for example, when Hillary Clinton says that Republican initiatives about immigration violate the Good Samaritan story. That\u2019s not a claim we can evaluate if we don\u2019t know what the Good Samaritan story is. Similarly, we can\u2019t evaluate claims of people who say, I\u2019m a Christian and I\u2019m opposed to abortion because the Bible is opposed to abortion, if we don\u2019t know anything about the Bible or we wouldn\u2019t know where to look in the Bible to look for the question of abortion.<\/p>\n\n

The more important issue, though, to me, is international. The question is, how can Americans understand the world, act in it economically, politically and militarily, without knowing something about the world\u2019s religions? We\u2019re having a conversation in the United States, or trying to, about Islam. Someone\u2019s trying to burn Korans and half the American public doesn\u2019t know that the Koran is a scripture in Islam, according to this survey \u2013 46 or 48%, or something like that.<\/p>\n\n

We\u2019re looking for moderate Islam. That\u2019s been in the conversation since 9\/11. Where are the moderates? Well, hundreds of millions of them are in Indonesia, but three-quarters of Americans don\u2019t know that Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country and we wouldn\u2019t know to look there because we don\u2019t know that Islam is active there. So yes, there is a kind of \u201cJeopardy\u201d quality to this. I think it\u2019s very easy to look at a particular question and dismiss it and say, well, what does that really indicate?<\/p>\n\n

But I think these kind of simple questions indicate the deficit that we have, as a country, in understanding the religions of the world and our own religions, and it handicaps us to act as informed citizens, as we\u2019re supposed to in the democracy that we live in. So I think it matters a lot and I think the answers to the \u201cso what\u201d question are many and various, but those are at least two.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong>Well, you used the phrase, \u201cwhat it indicates,\u201d and what if it indicates nothing but a set of habits of mind? Krista, I was not surprised at all when the survey results showed that atheists knew an awful lot about religion because, just as a practical matter, they know what they have to argue against, and they know what they\u2019re leaving.<\/p>\n\n

And when you hear that three-quarters of all atheists were once Christians, you know, good job, Sunday school teachers \u2013 (laughter) \u2013 because something obviously didn\u2019t stick. But it may show nothing more than a way of being immersed in our common world. I mean, New Yorkers know when it\u2019s Yom Kippur because they don\u2019t have to pay parking meters, apart from those who have a confessional allegiance to it.<\/p>\n\n

So if you are the kind of person who\u2019s just alive to the world around you, you\u2019re more likely to be picking up things that really have nothing to do with you on a daily basis, but it makes life more interesting. Surely, as someone who\u2019s talking to people about how to talk \u2013 you\u2019re talking to people about how to talk about it. Well \u2013<\/p>\n\n

KRISTA TIPPETT, AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA:<\/strong> So what you\u2019re pointing at is that religious experience is bigger than beliefs and bigger than knowledge, right? It\u2019s practice; it\u2019s experience; it\u2019s ritual; it\u2019s community. And people may not be able to turn that into correct answers or incorrect answers. I guess I think you\u2019re right, atheists and agnostics may know what they\u2019re rejecting. I also think the breakdown \u2013 what is the breakdown? It\u2019s a small percentage point of atheists and a larger percentage point of agnostics, right, isn\u2019t it? More people say they\u2019re agnostic or unaffiliated \u2013 many more.<\/p>\n\n

SMITH:<\/strong> A few more.<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT: <\/strong> OK, OK.<\/p>\n\n

SMITH:<\/strong> It\u2019s 4% total, and then each, roughly 2%, but there are a few more \u2013 atheists, a little below 2; agnostics a little above 2. But it\u2019s not a huge difference.<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT:<\/strong> I\u2019ll just say, experientially, starting a program on public radio called \u201cSpeaking of Faith\u201d \u2013 we recently have changed the name \u2013 but we have become aware, over these seven years, that we have a huge number of atheists and agnostics who are some of our most engaged listeners.<\/p>\n\n

So I experience, I would say, atheists and agnostics to be some of the most ethically engaged people in our culture. And I would even say, although some of them might bristle at this language, to be some of the most energized spiritual seekers. So that\u2019s a dynamic here, too. Something I\u2019m also aware of, having grown up in the Bible Belt going to church three times a week, I would have utterly failed. I would have been one of those six people.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ:<\/strong> Oh, come on!<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT: <\/strong> No, really! I wouldn\u2019t have learned any of this. It was about living in a culture, OK? It wasn\u2019t about a base of knowledge. Intellectual curiosity was not encouraged. And this gets at the question that\u2019s raised for me so much \u2013 not the \u201cso what\u201d question, but, so what\u2019s the source of the problem and how do we talk about a solution? I don\u2019t think intellectual curiosity is encouraged inside many traditions and many religious communities.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong>No, but I\u2019m interested in your use of that phrase \u201csource of the problem\u201d because it presumes that this is a problem, when the high level of correlation with education may simply mean that people who are more likely to know the answers to these questions are more likely to know a lot of things that people who have less education are less likely to know about.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO:<\/strong> Yes, but let\u2019s not forget, though, that two-thirds of the people who go to college and are scoring high, along with the agnostics and atheists, they\u2019re only getting 66%. And I know that you all aren\u2019t going to grade it, but I will because I\u2019m not an employee of Pew. (Laughter.) And that\u2019s a D, you know?\u2013<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ:<\/strong> But Americans only grade on a curve.<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO: <\/strong> So I mean, the atheists and the agnostics, if they\u2019re in my class, that\u2019s a D and the average American is getting an F. So it\u2019s not like this is something so great to write home about. Yes, you can talk about the relative performance, but in terms of absolute performance, it\u2019s pretty sad. I mean, we did not ask whether the Pope was Catholic. I was sort of keen to ask a question like that, just to show.<\/p>\n\n

But we did ask, is the Dalai Lama Buddhist, and to me, that\u2019s pretty close to, is the Pope Catholic? But half of Americans don\u2019t know that the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. How do you have a conversation about Tibet if you\u2019ve never even heard of this guy? It\u2019s like having a conversation about Vatican City without having heard of that guy. It\u2019s a difficult thing to do.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ:<\/strong> But probably, the same \u2013\u2013 it\u2019s many of the same people who can\u2019t find Iraq on a map when we\u2019ve got 150,000 troops fighting there. So maybe the question is broader than religious knowledge but implicates religious knowledge because we\u2019ve asked discretely about this area of our shared experience and shown that people aren\u2019t really paying that much attention.<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO<\/strong>: <\/strong> But I think it\u2019s important to remember, too, though, on these questions about religion in the public schools, that we have an erroneous public perception that we\u2019re not allowed to teach about the Bible or the world\u2019s religions in the public schools. Between three-quarters and two-thirds of Americans, on those questions, think that this is not a topic that can be broached in public schools. We don\u2019t have that perception about geography, for example.<\/p>\n\n

We know we\u2019re allowed to teach where Iraq is on a map. We think we\u2019re not allowed to teach what Christians believe. We think we\u2019re not allowed to teach what the Five Pillars of Islam are. So this, to me, is the great catch-22 in the survey, that we have this religious illiteracy in the public but the illiteracy is so huge that we think we\u2019re not allowed to remedy it in the public schools.<\/p>\n\n

But it\u2019s very, very clear, from what the Supreme Court has said about religion in public education \u2013 and there\u2019s, I think, one quote in the report \u2013 that no, you cannot pray with your teacher; no, you cannot read the Bible devotionally; but yes, you can teach the Bible as literature and yes, you can teach the world\u2019s religions. And the Supreme Court justices don\u2019t just say that this is constitutionally kosher; they also say that we should do it \u2013 that you\u2019re not an educated person unless you know something about the Bible and you\u2019re not an educated person unless you know something about the world\u2019s religions.<\/p>\n\n

But this message is not getting out to school administrators. It\u2019s not getting out to public school teachers. And I think that it\u2019s different from other arenas where we have a deficit, like science and geography, in that we actually believe, wrongly, that we can\u2019t teach it in public schools.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong>But if the current elbows-out wrestling in the public sphere is as content-free as it tends to be, it has to do with self-representation rather than actual underpinnings of what this is all about.<\/p>\n\n

When they have a fight in the Kansas City Zoo over whether you can put a statue of Ganesh at the elephant house because Christians rush in, complain to the authorities that oversee the public parks in Kansas City and say, you must have Noah\u2019s Ark there as well or else you\u2019re making a gesture that is biased toward Hindus in a city \u2013 and this is no knock at Kansas City \u2013 but I doubt one-in-100 people could explain what Hindus believe or their creation story or their pantheon, or very much about Hinduism at all, but Ganesh is perceived as a threat by the elephant house.<\/p>\n\n

We\u2019re in a period in our shared life here in this country where everybody\u2019s very vehement about religion, but in a kind of content-free manner. I don\u2019t know how you pull up your socks from that kind of posture. What\u2019s the next thing to do, Alan? I mean, what\u2019s the project, at this point?<\/p>\n\n

COOPERMAN: <\/strong> Well, I am an employee of Pew. (Laughter.) We are agnostic \u2013 almost atheist \u2013 about policy prescriptions. Some of this conversation, though, has led me to think that there might be interest in how the public does on general knowledge questions. We did have a few of those in the survey. \u2013\u2013We don\u2019t really have a way, again, to say whether people know more about Christianity than they know about chemistry, or vice versa. And on, essentially, a 20-minute telephone survey, we can only ask so many questions. But we did ask nine general knowledge questions for comparison purposes.<\/p>\n\n

So 59% of the public knows that \u2013 who is it \u2013 Joe Biden is vice president. The same percentage \u2013 six-in-ten \u2013 know that antibiotics don\u2019t kill viruses. Susan B. Anthony stunned us; she\u2019s on top of the charts here. I mean, people really get the Susan B. \u2013 I don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s the dollar coins that no one uses, or \u2013 (laughter). Forty-two percent know that Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick. By the way, 4% believe it was Stephen King.<\/p>\n\n

\n

\"knowledge-slide-10<\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n

And in an interesting comparison, to get to Ray\u2019s general point, yes, those who do well on the religion questions do well on the general knowledge questions, and those who do poorly on the general knowledge questions do poorly on the religion questions. They do go hand-in-hand. And maybe Greg can give more of an analysis than that.<\/p>\n\n

SMITH: <\/strong> The one thing I would add, in terms of the elbows-out approach and whether or not it\u2019s content-free, I mean, I think we should keep a couple things in mind. One is that the survey clearly demonstrates that when it comes to religion, there\u2019s an awful lot of important stuff that people are unfamiliar with.<\/p>\n\n

But at the same time, the survey also shows that it\u2019s not like the public knows nothing, either. People tend to be more knowledgeable, in particular, about their own faiths, as you\u2019d expect. Eight-in-ten Mormons get all three of our questions about Mormonism right. Most Americans \u2013 I realize that this would warrant an F in a class \u2013 but most Americans get more than half of the questions we asked about the Bible right.<\/p>\n\n

Seven-in-ten people recognized Moses as the one who led the exodus from Egypt. Seven-in-ten people can tell you where Jesus was born. I mean, these are important things about people\u2019s own faiths that they are aware of. So I wouldn\u2019t quite describe it as content-free, in terms of knowledge.<\/p>\n\n

The other thing we should keep in mind is that it\u2019s also not content-free in terms of beliefs. Even though people \u2013clearly are not \u2013experts in religious studies, it doesn\u2019t mean that they don\u2019t have deeply held beliefs, that they aren\u2019t deeply engaged in their faiths, that they aren\u2019t pious practitioners of their faiths. In many ways, there probably are some parallels with politics.<\/p>\n\n

We probably don\u2019t have a lot of people who are experts in the workings of American government, but it doesn\u2019t mean that they don\u2019t hold their ideological beliefs or their party identification very deeply. So I think there are two kinds of content that we have to keep in mind here: knowledge, but also depth of belief and practice.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> Well, let me amend that and say largely content-free. During the time of some of the highest-volume conflict about the posting of the Ten Commandments in civic buildings, it was found that a distressingly high number of Americans \u2013 and I say that out of a conviction that this is part of our common, Western cultural deposit \u2013 you should know what\u2019s in it even if you\u2019re not a believer \u2013 a distressingly high percentage couldn\u2019t name the Ten Commandments, even if you said, don\u2019t worry, you can say them out of order.<\/p>\n\n

So here they were, ready to go to the barricades over posting the Ten Commandments in civic spaces, insisting on their right to be there, in many cases insisting on the primacy of Christianity in our civic life, and yet were making, not a content-free assertion, but let\u2019s say, a content-handicapped assertion because they, themselves, could not even stand up for this Decalogue that they insist is a foundation stone of the United States. And I guess that gets to your point, Stephen, about when this is important and when it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO: <\/strong> I remember there was a survey done in the \u201960s where people were asked about the Ten Commandments. It was one of the few places where there were knowledge surveys before. But the question was, do you know the Ten Commandments? And the answer was, yes or no. So people were able to just say, oh yeah, I know the Ten Commandments. So it was a very different kind of survey.<\/p>\n\n

But I think, for me, if you want to talk about the religion that everybody wants to talk about now, which is Islam, it seems since 9\/11, we\u2019ve been struggling to have a national conversation about Islam and we\u2019ve been failing to have the national conversation. We have people who say, Islam is a religion of peace, and we have people who say, Islam is a religion of war. And then we have a rebuttal that says, Islam is a religion of peace. And then there\u2019s a rebuttal to that, that says, Islam is a religion of war. And then there\u2019s a rebuttal to that, that says, Islam is a religion of peace.<\/p>\n\n

And that\u2019s basically all we\u2019re able to say. The question is, why? The answer, I think, as this survey helps to point out,\u2013 is because we don\u2019t know enough to have a conversation. So we are then launched into your point exactly, which is the assertion of identity, right? I\u2019m a Christian; they\u2019re Muslims, right? And so we can\u2019t have a conversation about, for example, Jesus in the Koran \u2013 Jesus appearing a hundred times in the Koran. Because we don\u2019t even know that the Koran is the holy book of Islam, or at least, only half of us do. We haven\u2019t read it enough to know that Jesus is in there.<\/p>\n\n

So what happens, in terms of interfaith conversation and civic conversation about religion, is simply the assertion of identity. I think that if we had more knowledge about the world\u2019s religions, we could actually have conversations, whereas right now we can\u2019t have them. I think that\u2019s to the great detriment of our public and civic life, that we can\u2019t have a conversation about Islam, and so we see what is happening at the Islamic community center at ground zero. It isn\u2019t a conversation. It\u2019s a sort of assertion of, this is me and you\u2019re not me and therefore, go away.<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT:<\/strong> I know you\u2019re not saying that knowledge alone suffices, but I also think that a larger issue is not having a better cerebral knowledge of Islam, but knowing Muslims, right? It\u2019s that personal relationship. It\u2019s faces. And this is where the limits of something like this come in, although it\u2019s incredibly valuable.<\/p>\n\n

One thing I think that\u2019s gone wrong with religion in America is how we have taken on \u2013 we, journalists, media, politicians \u2013talk about religious people as sets of beliefs, and we define religions in terms of beliefs. You know, in fact, Muslims don\u2019t really talk about beliefs, right? It\u2019s about when you pray. It\u2019s about how you live. It\u2019s daily-lived piety. Buddhists don\u2019t really have beliefs. Hindus don\u2019t really have beliefs. So to me, it\u2019s a combination of knowledge and that human component.<\/p>\n\n

I actually think the thing that makes me most hopeful about all of this is a generational difference. Because what I see the young doing \u2013 I hate to generalize, even about generations \u2013 is engaging in relationships, engaging in service projects and then learning through that, building their knowledge base out of that, even starting to think theologically with more rigor about their own traditions out of that kind of contact.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> I\u2019m wondering whether it\u2019s a good thing or a bad thing that religion is one of those parts of our national life where everyone\u2019s qualified to speak. If we were doing a segment on quarks on the NewsHour, no offense, Stephen, but we wouldn\u2019t invite you\u2013\u2013 because we\u2019re assuming that there are probably better guys on quarks. But everybody can have an opinion on religion, whether they know anything or not.<\/p>\n\n

And so it\u2019s one of the hallmarks of the current \u2013 I mean, I don\u2019t want to dignify it by calling it a debate \u2013 but the debate over Islam is \u2013 it\u2019s like confetti being thrown into the air \u2013 people just saying stuff, and whether it\u2019s grounded in 1400 years of the history of this religion or not remains to be seen.<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO: <\/strong>This is where, I think, the interpersonal point that Krista\u2019s pointing out is really important. Because if you hear from Franklin Graham, for example, that what Muslims want is to kill Christians and Jews whenever they see them and you actually have a classmate in your high school, or a neighbor in your neighborhood, who\u2019s a Muslim, you know that there is at least one Muslim that isn\u2019t trying to kill all the Christians and Jews.<\/p>\n\n

So I mean, I think that\u2019s important. I totally agree, by the way, about the issue that religion is not about belief, or even necessarily about faith. I make this point in my latest book, that we shouldn\u2019t even refer to religions as faiths because that gives too much ground to the Protestants, who think that religion is about faith \u2013 although now we\u2019re not so sure, based on the survey, whether that\u2019s true anymore. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n\n

But to be fair, in this survey there are questions about things like Ramadan, which isn\u2019t about a belief. It\u2019s about a practice, right? So there\u2019s a question about whether Americans know something about other people\u2019s practices, or when the Sabbath starts, and things like that. But I also think that story is important, and that\u2019s another thing that we tried to get at in the survey by asking about figures in stories, like Job or like \u2013 who else was asked \u2013 Moses, right?<\/p>\n\n

So anyway, I\u2019m totally agreed that religions are not belief systems, purely, and that there\u2019s a sort of category mistake if you go there, and that one way we really do learn about other religions is through friends and neighbors who can tell us something about them.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> One of the interesting developments, Alan and Greg, in polling is deliberative polling, where you try to take a pool of people and see if they modify their views over time when you tell them more about something that you\u2019re asking them about.<\/p>\n\n

I wonder if questions about religion, because of where the answers reside in our personalities, would change that much over time if we told people more about these things and then asked them again in two months, a year, two years, or whatever. As people who are in this game, do you find this a useful exercise and could it be applied to this set of ideas and questions?<\/p>\n\n

COOPERMAN: <\/strong>Well, we don\u2019t do much in the way of deliberative polling. That is a part of our polling ethos, is that we try not to supply information that we know is going to affect the answer because we\u2019re just getting the answer in one sense that, in another, we\u2019ve supplied. We actually believe in fairly clean polling. Pew is not one of the places that does long introductions.<\/p>\n\n

You know that in Congress a bill that would do this and that and the other thing is now under consideration; what do you think about it? We tend not to do that. We tend to ask, do you know whether this bill is under consideration, a bill about X, and do you follow it closely or not closely? And then we ask the follow-up questions. But I would just say that on the point about whether knowledge accretes to understanding, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n

Back in a previous life, to keep up my Russian, I used to lead tours in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. And some of the people that I brought to the Soviet Union \u2013 everybody learned a great deal \u2013 some came away more adamantly anti-Soviet and some came away less. Not by any means was everybody less, at the end of the day. But we do see in our data that there is a correlation between knowledge, or more broadly, familiarity, and positive attitudes about other things.<\/p>\n\n

So we have asked this question about the Koran and a question about Allah \u2013 oh yes, thank you \u2013 what is the Islamic name for God? And we also asked, do you happen to know a Muslim? And people who know Muslims, people who know the word \u201cAllah,\u201d and people who know that the Koran is a holy book do tend to have more positive views of Islam than those who do not.<\/p>\n\n

Similarly, it\u2019s almost a truism in polling: People who say they personally know someone who is gay\/lesbian\/etc. are going to have more positive attitudes. Someone who says they know a Catholic or Jew or etc. will have more positive attitudes. So that familiarity, I would say, more than knowledge is what we can directly correlate with more positive attitudes.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong>Well, let me turn that around, then, and ask Stephen and Krista whether, in the face of more and better information, people would even take onboard more, so that they\u2019d have a different result. I think there\u2019s plenty of evidence to demonstrate that even when you tell people something in this sort of free-fire zone of knowledge in the United States, they won\u2019t necessarily take it onboard. They\u2019ll just continue to assert what they\u2019ve been asserting all along, like, don\u2019t confuse me with facts, kind of thing.<\/p>\n\n

So I\u2019m wondering how malleable these results are by doing better in supplying knowledge, supplying facts, or whether, if you\u2019re predisposed to have certain views about certain other Americans, you\u2019re going to have them, even if you supply more information and say, no, no, no, not a religion of war, not full of murderous hate for believers of other religions, that kind of thing.<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT:<\/strong> One thing that, again, with the younger generations \u2013 there are many religious leaders who are understandably bemoaning the fact that people are not being raised in their traditions and they\u2019re not staying in their traditions.\u2013 Pew\u2019s done a lot of work on that. But I think a flipside of that is that people who are 18, 19, 20 don\u2019t have the baggage that their parents had or that their grandparents had. They\u2019re not rejecting anything.<\/p>\n\n

I hear a lot of stories \u2013 and maybe you could speak to this \u2013 about undergraduates coming to college, about classes in New Testament and Hebrew Bible filling up with this open-minded, open-hearted curiosity, just wanting to know. Is that also an experience you have?<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO:<\/strong> Yeah, I think so. I think especially in the last 10 years there\u2019s been a real interest of undergrads in courses on religion. I think that one thing that does happen, though, is, there\u2019s a real quest for, kind of, big questions that goes on, on college campuses. And I think there is a redirection sometime in these courses toward facts and things like that, and that students are sort of like, well, wait a minute, I thought I was going to figure out my purpose in life, but instead, I\u2019m being told whether Matthew was written before Luke and how much of Luke was stolen from Mark, and that wasn\u2019t what I was here for.<\/p>\n\n

But I don\u2019t know. I guess it\u2019s an institutional malady of college professors that we do tend to be hopeful about \u2013 maybe it\u2019s true if NPR hosts \u2013 we\u2019re hopeful about young people. So I\u2019ll continue to be hopeful as well.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> I was interested in the South\/not-South data because the South is, by its own self-reporting, the most congregationally affiliated, the most likely to answer religion \u201cvery important\u201d in their lives, the highest levels of people who say they believe in God, and so on. Yet, this quadrant of the country is also the place with the lowest per-capita incomes, the lowest education levels, and also, now at the front lines of this question because so many Muslim students have come out of the countries of the world that will send them to the United States to learn to be engineers and doctors and various other things.<\/p>\n\n

One-third of all the doctors in the rural South were born in South Asia, which sort of troubles the waters of racial hierarchies in a nice, fundamental way when the gentleman telling you to take off your clothes and put on this paper gown is of a different race from yourself. What can you tell us about what\u2019s going on in the South, Greg?<\/p>\n\n

SMITH: <\/strong>It\u2019s very interesting. As we covered in the presentation, if you look at the results overall, the South is the region that really stands out. And it stands out because people in the South don\u2019t score as well as people in the other regions of the country. People in the East and the Midwest and the West, they all do about the same as each other, and they all do a little bit better than people in the South.<\/p>\n\n

I should also point out, though, something that gets back to this dichotomy, as to knowing about one\u2019s own faith versus other faiths. If we restrict the analysis and we look only at questions about the Bible and about Christianity, then the South doesn\u2019t come out at the bottom. Now, people in the South don\u2019t do better than people in other regions about the Bible and about Christianity.<\/p>\n\n

Perhaps you\u2019d hypothesize that the Bible Belt would do better on questions about the Bible. They don\u2019t. They do about the same as people in the Northeast and about the same as people in the West. The people in the Midwest actually do slightly better than people in the South, even on questions about Bible and Christianity.<\/p>\n\n

But I do think that, that\u2019s something that\u2019s important to keep in mind. \u2013I think it\u2019s very helpful to look at the overall findings. We designed the survey specifically to try to get a good read both on what people know about their own faiths, as well as what they know about other faiths.<\/p>\n\n

But we should also keep in mind that if you drill down a little bit and look at different domains, then the patterns can change a little bit, and that\u2019s one of the things you see going on with the South. They don\u2019t necessarily know less about their own faith, but they don\u2019t score as well on questions about world religions and other faiths.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> This, of all the regions in the country, has been a hotbed of state-level battles over curriculum, over content, over symbolic displays of religious symbols in civic space \u2013 a lot of these wrestling matches over the place of religion in our common life. The South has been the locus of a lot of these battles.<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO: <\/strong> Yeah, there are now efforts in Texas to get mentions of Islam out of school textbooks so that our kids won\u2019t be troubled by information about Islam. I think that\u2019s something to look at.<\/p>\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n

Something we haven\u2019t talked about is Catholics. Are we so used to Catholics not knowing anything about Catholicism that it\u2019s not even to be remarked here? (Laughter.) As I traveled around and talked about religious literacy a few years ago, people were pretty aware and worried \u2013 the Catholics I spoke with \u2013 about just how bad the situation was. I remember there was a sociological study done a few years ago \u2013 some of you might know it \u2013 I think it was called \u201cYoung Adult Catholics.\u201d And there was a finding in there that basically there was no correlation between knowledge about the Catholic tradition and how many years you took CCD classes \u2013 zero correlation.<\/p>\n\n

In other words, you were just as likely to know nothing about your religion from having taken all these classes as you were having never taken them at all. I think there\u2019s a finding here that the Catholic tradition is in really big trouble, in terms of \u2013 I mean, we already know that 10%of Americans are ex-Catholics, but it seems that Catholics are doing much worse \u2013 significantly worse \u2013 than other religious groups in terms of teaching the basics of their tradition. I guess I shouldn\u2019t be asking you all why or anything like that, because you\u2019re not allowed to say. (Laughter.)<\/p>\n\n

COOPERMAN: <\/strong> I asked a priest about this and the priest said, well, we don\u2019t even get the Bible until third theologate, meaning that in the training for the priesthood, that their training in the Bible doesn\u2019t begin until the third year. So there is something in the Catholic tradition that is more based around the magisterium \u2013 the teachings, the accreted deposit of faith over the centuries \u2013 that\u2019s different from the Protestant weight placed on the Bible.<\/p>\n\n

And so at least on the Bible questions, it\u2019s not surprising to me that Catholics would do less well than Protestants. And you alluded, Steve, to a couple of Gallup poll questions. As I said, there\u2019s really very little historical data, but Glock and Stark did do a survey of Northern California churchgoers in 1963.<\/p>\n\n

That study is really best-known for its findings on anti-Semitism. But among the other findings in that survey were that, among Northern California churchgoers, Protestants did considerably better on knowledge questions about the Bible than Catholics did. So in the literature of sociology on this, we have known that Protestants do better on the Bible than Catholics do.<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO: <\/strong> And yet, Catholic students are also taking \u2013 in Catholic parochial schools, \u2013they do have, as part of the curriculum, I think almost everywhere, a world religions course. And that\u2019s not working for world religions knowledge, either.<\/p>\n\n

SMITH:<\/strong> That\u2019s a good point. One of the things that the data show are that across the domains of knowledge, Catholics perhaps don\u2019t perform very well, but they\u2019re certainly very consistent. No matter what kind of question you look at, they always come in just ever so slightly below the national average. So it\u2019s not that there\u2019s one area in which they really fall down, and there\u2019s also no area in which they really excel. Whether we\u2019re talking about questions about the Bible or world religions or religion in the public schools or atheism and agnosticism, Catholics are very consistently just below the national average.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> If you look at the coverage of religion \u2013 and we\u2019ll talk more about this later \u2013 I think the awareness among non-Catholics and Catholics would be very low, that the church is in that kind of crisis, that the number of ex-Catholics is far greater than that of any other religious group in America, except for self-identifying Roman Catholics.<\/p>\n\n

Without the new Latino immigration, the Catholic Church\u2019s numbers would be dropping like a rock, though maybe, given the coverage of the church lately in the popular media, having an argument about what they know and what they don\u2019t know would be better than what\u2019s in those stories in recent months.<\/p>\n\n

We have two microphones, \u2013and if you have questions for our panelists, please tell us who you are, where you\u2019re from and let it fly.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> Krista and Stephen, any particular answer or result that made you say, wow, or gee, or just think that it was either going to be much higher or much lower \u2013 that sort of stuck out for you?<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT: <\/strong> Not really. I would like to just say something to the \u201cso what\u201d question. Part of our reaction to it is, so I don\u2019t know if it matters if people know who Jonathan Edwards is. I kind of wish they knew a little bit about Niebuhr and Heschel \u2013 but not who they were, but what their thinking was \u2013<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ:<\/strong> Who? That\u2019s a homework assignment for the rest of you.<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT: <\/strong> So I agree with you that to be a citizen of the 21st century, we need to be more literate. Americans need to know more. I also think our public lives, our common lives, can use all the assets we can bring to it, including theological perspective, including these practices of care for the other that religious traditions have cultivated across centuries.<\/p>\n\n

And ultimately, that\u2019s not just about knowledge, but knowledge is a part of that. As I said, maybe people start with service and go back to knowledge, but to me, there is a big \u201cso what\u201d here, even though I would quibble with some of the questions \u2013 whether it\u2019s those particular things.\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n\n

Q: <\/strong>My name is Chris Stephenson from America\u2019s Quilt of Faith in Northern Virginia. Let\u2019s say that we make some progress in religious literacy. And here\u2019s a question I\u2019d like to ask. It is hypothetical. Are there differences between an America that does better in 10 years, say, on a similar religious survey because they were taught religion in public schools and universities and one that does better because they, collectively \u2013 we Americans had been more active in our different faiths? If so, what are these differences? And if not, why not?<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO:<\/strong> I\u2019m sure Pew is not allowed to answer hypothetical questions, is that right? So can I do that one? I think that there\u2019s a difference between learning about your own religion inside your own religious tradition, including learning about others from the perspective of your tradition, and learning about things in the public schools or in the media or in a public forum that is not religiously committed.<\/p>\n\n

A lot of people have said to me, OK, it\u2019s a religious problem; it should be solved by religious people. Don\u2019t involve the public schools. Don\u2019t involve the media. Let Catholics deal with it. But the reality is, churches and synagogues and mosques and Zen centers, they\u2019re not set up to educate you about other religions. That\u2019s not their job.<\/p>\n\n

The job of the public schools is to educate our young people about the world and to prepare them to be citizens. And I think the question is, do you accept the premise that I have argued \u2013 and others, as well \u2013 that knowing about the world includes knowing about the religious traditions of the world, and that that\u2019s something we need to do to equip for citizenship.<\/p>\n\n

So I think there would be a difference in those two hypotheticals, and I think the one where we learn about religions inside our public institutions would, in some ways, be preferable because we would be getting a kind of collective, civic conversation about religions going, rather than an intra \u2013 inside a particular religious tradition.<\/p>\n\n

That said, I totally welcome conversations about other religions inside particular religious perspectives. I think some of those are incendiary. I\u2019m not sure I would want to send my kid to a class on Islam that was taught by the Rev. Franklin Graham. But some of them are informative.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ:<\/strong> Krista, what do you think? Is a country that does better on this test, both inside and outside the faith, a better country down the road?<\/p>\n\n

TIPPETT: <\/strong>One would hope so. I think that\u2019s all I can say.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> Fair answer.<\/p>\n\n

Q: <\/strong> I have two questions. Did anybody harvest data on standardized testing and whether there were religious literacy questions asked?<\/p>\n\n

SMITH:<\/strong> Well, no. \u2013 When we looked at the questions that had been asked in the past, we tried to focus our results on things that we might be able to tap into, in terms of trend data. So we\u2019d be most interested in questions that had been asked on nationally representative surveys of adults because our own samples don\u2019t tend to deal with student populations or with minors.<\/p>\n\n

That said, I think it would be very interesting to look and see if there have been questions about religious history, for instance, on standardized tests or college admissions exams. I think that would be something very interesting. And that might be a way to, at least for a certain segment of the population, to try and look back over time and see what kind of a trajectory these things had.<\/p>\n\n

PROTHERO:<\/strong> I think you could keep that question in mind for the panel today that includes some religious educators and educators in public schools.<\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ:<\/strong> In my business, that\u2019s called forward-promoting. Very good.<\/p>\n\n

Q: <\/strong> George Conklin from Berkeley. Several decades ago, Bob Bellah and his colleagues at UC-Berkeley did a study of faith in America, published as \u201cHabits of the Heart.\u201d They identified a pattern of aggregated faith with a thread of Buddhism, a thread of Catholicism, and they termed that \u201cSheila-ism.\u201d Is Sheila-ism on the increase today?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

COOPERMAN: <\/strong>Yes, and we don\u2019t have that data from this survey, but we did a survey last year on the mixing and matching of religious faiths in the United States. Again, historical data is a problem, but we had some, and the indications in the questions that we do have trend data on are that it\u2019s on the rise.<\/p>\n\n

Where our particular contribution on this was, being able to correlate how often people go to religious services with their syncretic beliefs, if you will \u2013 not that we ever use that word in the report. But what we found, for example, is that even among Roman Catholics who tell us that they go to church every single week \u2013 once a week or more \u2013 about a quarter of them believe in reincarnation and about 20% believe in astrology.<\/p>\n\n

And if I remember off the top of my head, about 20% \u2013 or maybe about 15% \u2013 believe in spiritual energy in physical objects, such as crystals and mountains. We had a wonderful set of questions about this that demonstrated all across the board, including among evangelical Protestants who go to church once a week \u2013 if you go to an evangelical Protestant church and you sit in your pew this Sunday and you look down at the 10 people in your pew, one of the 10 of you believes in reincarnation, \u2013 if your church is nationally representative.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

SMITH:<\/strong> Can I just point out one other thing to follow up on that? In a similar vein, we\u2019ve also done other surveys over the last few years, and one of the most interesting questions we\u2019ve asked is about what people think it takes to attain eternal life, and who people think can attain eternal life.<\/p>\n\n

Is this something that only members of your faith can achieve, or is it something that members of other faiths can achieve? And our surveys have shown that lots of people \u2013 majorities of people \u2013 think that many faiths, not just their own, can lead to eternal life. We found this so interesting that we actually went back and did follow-up surveys on this question and asked people, specifically, when they say many faiths can lead to eternal life, what do they mean?<\/p>\n\n

Are they talking just about members of the Christian denomination next door? Are these Methodists who are sort of grudgingly admitting that Lutherans can get to heaven, or are these Christians who mean that, you know what, Judaism and Islam and Hinduism and even non-belief are things that can get you to eternal life? And it turns out people really mean other faiths. Christians, when they say many religions can lead to eternal life, mean religions other than Christianity.<\/p>\n\n

I think that points in a similar direction. I also think it raises an interesting question, though, with respect to religious knowledge. I mean, that\u2019s a pretty open-minded thing to say, right \u2013 that many religions can lead to eternal life. One question I have \u2013 I don\u2019t think these data answer it directly \u2013 is, do these people realize that, that may not be what their religion teaches?<\/p>\n\n

And if they did realize that, would it change their belief, would it change their perspective? I mean, we know, on the one hand, that generally speaking, knowledge of people from other faiths is associated with more tolerance, more favorable views. But this is one area where that might not be the case. If you actually were to come to learn that your religion didn\u2019t teach that many religions can lead to eternal life, would that lead to you holding a less-inclusive view about these things? I don\u2019t know.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

SUAREZ: <\/strong> That set of data, over time, is given tremendous significance by Bob Putnam in his new book, American Grace, where he looks at people who are adherents of faiths that make very concrete, exclusive faith claims, and then asks the members of those faiths whether people who believe other things can still get to heaven based on being a decent person.<\/p>\n\n

Very, very high percentages \u2013 and the trend is up over time, which may be an argument for knowing people. It\u2019s hard to condemn the Jew next door if you know the Jew next door. We are out of time for this session. (Applause.)<\/p>\n\n

This written transcript has been edited by Amy Stern for clarity and grammar.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Photo credit: Eric Swanson\/Corbis<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Pew Forum\u2019s Alan Cooperman and Greg Smith, along with Boston University professor and author Stephen Prothero and Krista Tippett of American Public Media, explore key findings from a new Pew Forum survey on how much Americans know about religion as part of a panel discussion at a national symposium on religious literacy in Washington, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":294,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","sub_headline":"","sub_title":"","_prc_public_revisions":[],"_ppp_expiration_hours":0,"_ppp_enabled":false,"ai_generated_summary":"","bylines":[],"acknowledgements":[],"displayBylines":false,"prc_watchers":[],"relatedPosts":[],"reportMaterials":[],"multiSectionReport":[],"package_parts__enabled":false,"package_parts":[],"_prc_fork_parent":0,"_prc_fork_status":"","_prc_active_fork":0,"datacite_doi":"","datacite_doi_citation":"","_prc_seo_qr_attachment_id":0,"spoken_article_player_enabled":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"bylines":[],"collection":[],"datasets":[],"level_of_effort":[],"primary_audience":[],"information_type":[],"_post_visibility":[],"formats":[469],"_fund_pool":[],"languages":[],"regions-countries":[],"research-teams":[517],"workflow-status":[],"class_list":["post-73686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","formats-transcript","research-teams-religion"],"label":false,"post_parent":73695,"word_count":12000,"canonical_url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications\/","art_direction":{"A1":{"id":88501,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif?w=300&h=200&crop=1","width":300,"height":200,"chartArt":false},"A2":{"id":88501,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif?w=268&h=151&crop=1","width":268,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"A3":{"id":88501,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif?w=194&h=110&crop=1","width":194,"height":110,"chartArt":false},"A4":{"id":88501,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif?w=268&h=151&crop=1","width":268,"height":151,"chartArt":false},"XL":{"id":88501,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif?w=300&h=200&crop=1","width":300,"height":200,"chartArt":false},"social":{"id":88501,"rawUrl":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/ReligiousKnowledge-large6.gif?w=300&h=200&crop=1","width":300,"height":200,"chartArt":false}},"_embeds":[],"watchers":[],"table_of_contents":[{"id":73695,"title":"U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey\/","is_active":false},{"id":73708,"title":"Preface","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-preface","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-preface\/","is_active":false},{"id":73750,"title":"FAQs About Measuring Religious Knowledge (updated)","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-faqs-about-measuring-religious-knowledge","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-faqs-about-measuring-religious-knowledge\/","is_active":false},{"id":73766,"title":"Who Knows What About Religion","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-who-knows-what-about-religion","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-who-knows-what-about-religion\/","is_active":false},{"id":73732,"title":"Factors Linked With Religious Knowledge","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-factors-linked-with-religious-knowledge","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-factors-linked-with-religious-knowledge\/","is_active":false},{"id":73780,"title":"About the Project","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-about-the-project","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-about-the-project\/","is_active":false},{"id":73719,"title":"Appendix A: Survey Methodology","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-appendix-a-survey-methodology","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-appendix-a-survey-methodology\/","is_active":false},{"id":73686,"title":"An Overview of the Pew Forum Survey, Results and Implications","slug":"us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications\/","is_active":true}],"report_materials":[{"key":"774b145b-482b-4d80-96ec-f30ef9146bfb","type":"report","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/religious-knowledge-full-report.pdf","label":"","icon":"","attachmentId":88499},{"key":"b7b9d00f-ecd4-4a33-9227-9aedef28e5ae","type":"topline","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/20\/2010\/09\/religious-knowledge-topline.pdf","label":"","icon":"","attachmentId":88493},{"key":"10670d4e-4b20-4048-bc96-f757fa7deae0","type":"link","url":"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2010\/09\/religious-knowledge-questionnaire.pdf","label":"Survey questionnaire","icon":"topline","attachmentId":""},{"key":"ea6c3895-0a05-4fd1-a1a3-301c1dc44f03","type":"link","url":"https:\/\/assets.pewresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2010\/09\/religious-knowledge-survey-answers.pdf","label":"Answers: U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey","icon":"topline","attachmentId":""},{"type":"dataset","id":1757,"label":"U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey","url":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/dataset\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey\/"}],"report_pagination":{"current_post":{"id":73686,"title":"An Overview of the Pew Forum Survey, Results and Implications","slug":"us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications\/","is_active":true,"page_num":8},"next_post":null,"previous_post":{"id":73719,"title":"Appendix A: Survey Methodology","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-appendix-a-survey-methodology","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-appendix-a-survey-methodology\/","is_active":false,"page_num":7},"pagination_items":[{"id":73695,"title":"U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey\/","is_active":false,"page_num":1},{"id":73708,"title":"Preface","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-preface","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-preface\/","is_active":false,"page_num":2},{"id":73750,"title":"FAQs About Measuring Religious Knowledge (updated)","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-faqs-about-measuring-religious-knowledge","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-faqs-about-measuring-religious-knowledge\/","is_active":false,"page_num":3},{"id":73766,"title":"Who Knows What About Religion","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-who-knows-what-about-religion","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-who-knows-what-about-religion\/","is_active":false,"page_num":4},{"id":73732,"title":"Factors Linked With Religious Knowledge","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-factors-linked-with-religious-knowledge","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-factors-linked-with-religious-knowledge\/","is_active":false,"page_num":5},{"id":73780,"title":"About the Project","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-about-the-project","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-about-the-project\/","is_active":false,"page_num":6},{"id":73719,"title":"Appendix A: Survey Methodology","slug":"u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-appendix-a-survey-methodology","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-appendix-a-survey-methodology\/","is_active":false,"page_num":7},{"id":73686,"title":"An Overview of the Pew Forum Survey, Results and Implications","slug":"us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2010\/09\/28\/us-religious-knowledge-an-overview-of-the-pew-forum-survey-results-and-implications\/","is_active":true,"page_num":8}]},"parent_info":{"parent_title":"U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey","parent_id":73695},"materialsOrdered":[],"chaptersOrdered":[],"partsOrdered":[],"partsEnabled":false,"datacite_doi":"","prc_seo_data":{"title":"An Overview of the Pew Forum Survey, Results and Implications","description":"The Pew Forum\u2019s Alan Cooperman and Greg Smith, along with Boston University professor and author Stephen Prothero and Krista Tippett of American Public Media, explore key findings from a new…","og_title":"An Overview of the Pew Forum Survey, Results and Implications","og_description":"The Pew Forum\u2019s Alan Cooperman and Greg Smith, along with Boston University professor and author Stephen Prothero and Krista Tippett of American Public Media, explore key findings from a new…","schema_type":"Article","noindex":false,"canonical_url":"","primary_terms":[],"custom_schema":[],"og_image":88501,"indexnow_submitted_at":null,"gsc_index_status":null},"prepublish_checks":{"prc-image-alt-text":{"status":"complete","message":"No image blocks in content.","data":null},"prc-about-this-research":{"status":"incomplete","message":"Add an \"About this research\" details block.","data":null},"prc-paragraph-count":{"status":"complete","message":"Found 177 paragraphs.","data":{"count":177}},"prc-internal-link":{"status":"complete","message":"Found 1 internal link.","data":{"count":1}}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"relatedPostsOrdered":[],"bylinesOrdered":[],"acknowledgementsOrdered":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/294"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123223,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73686\/revisions\/123223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"bylines","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bylines?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"collection","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"datasets","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/datasets?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"level_of_effort","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/level_of_effort?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"primary_audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary_audience?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"information_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/information_type?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"_post_visibility","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_post_visibility?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"formats","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/formats?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"_fund_pool","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/_fund_pool?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"languages","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/languages?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"regions-countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regions-countries?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"research-teams","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-teams?post=73686"},{"taxonomy":"workflow-status","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/workflow-status?post=73686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}