Spike ,'Smile Time'
Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, pandas, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.
I think the key points in that study are actually these:
On questions about the Bible and Christianity, the groups that answered the most right were Mormons and white evangelical Protestants.
On questions about world religions, like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, the groups that did the best were atheists, agnostics and Jews.
So, Americans are not necessarily "deeply ignorant about religion"; rather, they are deeply ignorant about other religions. And, apparently, road rules.
rather, they are deeply ignorant about other religions.
Well, not the atheists.
It looks like no one else was injured by the suicide gunman. The campus is completely shut down and closed.
The religious history of Christianity the US is a long and proud tradition of people who have a "personal relationship with Jesus" and little or no knowledge of the Bible or the practices or a particular Church.
There's also the American tradition of holding X, Y, or Z religion because that's what your parents were, or that's what your spouse is. It isn't even a matter of selection, just taking the path of least resistance. With that tradition, it's easy to limit your religious education to "just enough to get by" and then forget even that much. (Which isn't, of course, to say that all people do that. Just that it's very easy to go that route if you want to.)
There's also the American tradition of holding X, Y, or Z religion because that's what your parents were, or that's what your spouse is.
That's true of all cultures and all religions.
eta: At least for the 'parents' part.
Link to the Pew online quiz about religion.
Fair point, tommy.
Must think this through further.
The religious history of Christianity the US is a long and proud tradition of people who have a "personal relationship with Jesus" and little or no knowledge of the Bible or the practices or a particular Church.
This is very true. An overwhelming number of Americans believe in God (something like 90%), but they don't necessarily identify with a religion, whereas in a place like France, an overwhelming number of people will self-identify as Catholic but claim not to believe in God.
in a place like France, an overwhelming number of people will self-identify as Catholic but claim not to believe in God.
So it's more of a cultural marker, then?
There's also the American tradition of holding X, Y, or Z religion because that's what your parents were, or that's what your spouse is. It isn't even a matter of selection, just taking the path of least resistance.
What makes American Christians unusual is that this is much less true here than in Europe (where people tend to belong to the state church by default but not actually give a crap about it). Having no state religion has led to a culture in which people take their religion much more seriously. (The theory I've read regarding this is that people don't tend to respect or trust their governments. So if the government is also the church, this leads to an eventual decline in religiousity. This never happened in the US.)