Q&A: What Americans Don't Know About Religion Could Fill a Book
In a related way, is it possible that religious illiteracy makes for relative religious tranquility in our country? After all, doctrinal ignorance may go hand in hand with the absence of sectarian and interreligious conflicts.
You could say that about many things. If Americans knew nothing about politics, then they wouldn't get angry about politics. If they never went to movies, they'd never argue about movies. So while this is also true about religion, the cost of not knowing about religion is too high in a world in which religion is so volatile and so influential. Furthermore, religious tolerance is so deeply embedded in American culture that I think we can tolerate a lot more knowledge. We're a long way away from worrying about religious warfare in this country. Some people want to make the claim that if we knew more about other religions, we would get along better. I don't believe that, actually. But I don't believe the opposite either. Knowledge can lead in either direction—or in neither. The understanding is important given how important religion is in the world.
How should America address its current religious illiteracy?
I think we need to have courses about the Bible and world religions in middle schools and high schools, and I think they should be mandatory–with an opt-out provision. One course would cover the five or seven great religions, however you count them. The other would be about the Bible and its afterlife. Students would read the Gospel of Matthew and Genesis to learn the basic stories and characters, but they would also learn about the uses of the Bible in world and American history, in literature, and in politics–how it was used, for example, by Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King Jr. By the way, I think few students would opt out of these courses.
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