Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't » (Reprint)

Stephen Prothero is the chair of the religion department at Boston University. His book American Jesus was named one of the best religion books of 2003 by Publishers Weekly and one of the year's best nonfiction books by the Chicago Tribune. He writes and reviews for the New York Times Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Salon, and other publications. He holds degrees from Harvard and Yale.

The United States is one of the most religious places on earth, but it is also a nation of shocking religious illiteracy. Only 10 percent of American teenagers can name all five major world religions and 15 percent cannot name any. Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most of life's basic questions, yet only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible. Many Protestants can t name the four Gospels, many Catholics can t name the seven sacraments, and many Jews who can t name the first five books of the Bible.

Despite this lack of basic knowledge, politicians and pundits continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missed--or misinterpreted--by the vast majority of Americans. "We have a major civic problem on our hands," says religion scholar Stephen Prothero. He makes the provocative case that to remedy this problem, we should return to teaching religion in the public schools. Alongside "reading, writing, and arithmetic," religion ought to become the "Fourth R" of American education. He pinpoints key moments in American history that spawned the current epidemic of religious illiteracy, revealing what we as a people once knew about religion and how we forgot so much of it. Prothero also offers readers practical solutions, including a Dictionary of Religious Literacy--key terms, beliefs, characters, and stories that every American needs to understand in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.

Many believe that America's descent into religious illiteracy was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on banishing religion from the public square. Prothero reveals that this is a profound misunderstanding. "In one of the great ironies of American religious history," Prothero writes, "it was the nation's most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road to religious illiteracy. Just how that happened is one of the stories this book has to tell."

Prothero avoids the trap of religious relativism by addressing both the core tenets of the world's major religions and the real differences among them. Complete with a dictionary of the key beliefs, characters, and stories of Christianity, Islam, and other religions, Religious Literacy reveals what every American needs to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.

The Washington Post - Susan Jacoby

In this book, the author combines a lively history of the rise and fall of American religious literacy with a set of proposed remedies based on his hope that "the Fall into religious ignorance is reversible." He also includes a useful multicultural glossary of religious definitions and allusions, in which religious illiterates can find the prodigal son, the promised land, the Quakers and the Koran.

Introduction     1
The Problem
A Nation of Religious Illiterates     27
Religion Matters     49
The Past
Eden (What We Once Knew)     73
The Fall (How We Forgot)     109
The Proposal
Redemption (What to Do?)     155
A Dictionary of Religious Literacy     185
Religious Literacy Quiz     293
Further Reading     299
Acknowledgments     303
Notes     307
Index     353