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Id ask them to draw a line between the two, and its amazing (laughter) the lines that they would draw in their heads. WILFRED MCCLAY, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT CHATTANOOGA: Im going to deliberately phrase this in a way that will give you a big, fat target because I want to draw you out on this issue. How much is it that youre hoping people who get this kind of education will take up those causes again, and then, is this a cycle where people then take up the causes and forget about the initial theology behind it again? So I think that on the one hand, we shouldnt expect that a course of this sort of if it could ever be taught should be expected to cure all of our curiosities here because it cant. PROTHERO: I think there is a difference, but I think Hitchens is ignorant of religion. Its a public school. I also should say that I give the quiz to my students before they take my class, not when theyre done with my class because that would be too embarrassing (laughter) to give it at the end. The one thing that it does is it gives the teachers some cover. Who should be teaching it? I think part of the reason why I think empowering citizens to know more about religion is important is because I think some of the reflex that politicians have to just invoke religion would start to go away because right now this is what I was trying to say about the invocation that right now, you can just play the religion card a little bit without there being any follow-up. Were not going to quiz you on it. I think thats a more respectable word. And this gets replaced by a form of evangelicalism that is really much more emotional, less doctrinal, trust-the-head a lot less. Religious illiteracy and foreign policy Theres adult Sunday school and there are Bible studies at all these churches, and so Im just wondering if theres something else going on there other than Bible study and Sunday school, whatever those things mean. Well, its not clear to me there will be a lot of attacks. Why do you want to inject these problems in the public schools? (Laughter.) I just wanted to throw that out. I think one direction to go there is to what extent religion matters vis--vis other subjects, and you hear all the time in this literature on the new atheism that religion is one of the greatest forces for evil in world history, and I actually agree with that. Now, they are running around with stories. The other objection is that its too controversial. CROMARTIE: David did a cover story in Time magazine on this very topic. I dont think that elementary schools should have these courses, by the way. I think thats great. It was outside San Antonio, and I was very impressed by it. Now, the way they interact with Jesus is not in this personal kind of touchy they dont like the friend like they dont have a friend in Jesus. I want to say its more Confucian, its more hierarchical. And you look at Kashmir, where we have two nuclear powers a Hindu majority, the state of India, and the Muslim majority, the state of Pakistan facing down each other. PROTHERO: I have some insider sources that have given me that information. They think Im in favor of slavery or something. Politicians are going to be invoking religious reasons for their public policy stances, and we, as citizens and as journalists and academics, should know something about religion so we can engage them, and also so we can I think, in some cases so we can flush out the demagogues who actually dont have a religious argument but have a kind of religious invocation where theyre sort of invoking God or invoking religion without actually having a religious argument underneath that invocation. There are many stereotypes about people of different faiths, which fails to address the wide range of diversity found among various traditions. SCHAEFER RILEY: Its all off the record now, right? And I also think theres a lot of energy, even in many megachurches now, around social action and service, and these are also really important components of understanding what religion is about, how it matters in peoples lives. Going back to the early part of the 20th century, they have never gone in whole-hog for this religion is about touchy, feely, loving Jesus and having him as your friend because theyve always had the sense of being in a fight, in an intellectual fight, with the liberals who are kind of trying to take over the country. So I dont think the place to do this is there. Thats good. Religious literacy throughout American history Thats a secular false assumption; it should either be taught as true or not true. I think there may be a tradeoff here or there may just be competing values. Its about his struggle as an evangelical to kind of hang in with evangelicalism as he goes to Oral Roberts University. Im not allowed to. And religious literacy is a loser along the way because it becomes increasingly less important, and, in fact, it becomes a barrier to ecumenical cooperation on things like abolition for people to actually argue or to know the salient differences, say, between Methodists and Baptists. He doesnt know anything about religion. As a Jew, when I talk about the patriarchs, I talk about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel, three guys, four women. This is really astonishing. Thats the way it is. And so Im not confused about that piece of this. I think religion, to me, is exciting. The key moments in my story have to do with moments when Americans opt for interdenominational or interreligious or interfaith cooperation and decide to forget things, and that decision to forget things is fateful, but its also productive in some ways. The term "religious literacy" refers to a fundamental comprehension of the practices, beliefs, and institutions of various global religious traditions. This is what nonreligious people say when theyre pretending to be religious. So Modestos interesting, and I went out there and I spoke to them a couple of months ago. And in fact, to your point about whats interesting about religions is that they tell you, do this and you will go to heaven, well, they tell you to do different things and that thats -. NAOMI SCHAEFER RILEY, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Just very quick on this point, what is it that theyre doing then? And then we get to the 1950s, and we see the communists over there and we say, hey, were not so far away, we Jews, Protestants and Catholics. Then theres this other way of talking about religion, which is more secular. The Pew Research Center Forum on Religion & Public Life disseminated the results of a survey on religious literacy that asked questions about knowledge of beliefs and practices of major religious traditions, as well as the role of religion in American history and public life. (Laughs.) In short, there is a religious way to talk about religion and a secular way to talk about religion. That wasnt why he was dying on the cross. I was particularly struck, as John was, by your challenge to journalists to flush out demagogues who invoke God without having religious argument beneath it, and I wondered, one , PROTHERO: Did I say that? My fathers a medical doctor; he had this whole thing about not bringing his work home that I also had. I think people in this culture are starved for community. They actually say this. You will not be graded. Is it to be a Christian if I want to pooh-pooh your friend who thinks to be a Christian is not to have premarital sex and to not smoke pot? I dont know those people. Thank you. Well, I think thats one of the assumptions of a piece I wrote for Beliefnet: A Religious Test for the Presidency. My argument there was not that we need to make sure that our presidents believe in God or are Christians, but we need to quiz them. I get asked a lot about how I got started on this project, and Im actually not really sure. So that could be a problem. And its an important form of fake Christianity if its fake because its growing so quickly and its global and its however many million people worldwide. ), PROTHERO: So how do you get from here to there? He has a 9-year-old understanding of God. And it was really, really intriguing to me how poorly they would do. There were all these groups. One thing that really astonished me when I used to teach this is I used to teach the biblical arguments for slavery (unintelligible) against slavery with my students in my American religion courses. And then you have a tradition like Anglicanism, which does value reason, but Anglicans are also biblically illiterate. So I dont know I would be I would love to know. To some extent, its the very basic information we dont have about any so-called other religion, including Mormonism. Theyve never been not secular. But they actually kind of editorialize and they say, we really do need our young people to know something about the Bible and to know something about the worlds religions, and it really makes sense to say that kids arent educated when they get out of high school if they dont know something about these things, and we need to have these kinds of courses. When I would say things like in Matthew, blah, blah, blah, the students would get that look like they sort of knew what I was talking about but they really didnt. In this kind of politics, it seems to me that its imperative for citizens to know something about religion. There was a time when faith was all about knowing the doctrine and being enmeshed in that and being able to recite things and knowing the history and the context. There have been some surveys where people are asked: What do you know about Islam? (Laughter.) Isnt that fascinating? That is because religion is a technology, an art and craft created in and through human bodies in time and space. I think theres some value to a course that puts you in the same place in this huge complicated conversation that we all find ourselves in the middle of. And were supposed to use those faculties to reach God, to understand God. ANDREA STONE, USA TODAY: I just wanted to say that I totally agree with what Kathy said, and as a New Yorker and New Yorkers are getting a bum rap Id like to give a New York perspective because I think Rudy Giuliani at the last debate gave a when somebody asked him about the Bible and if he believed it, and he talked about how he believed these were great allegorical stories and he believed that they werent literally true . But I think its a theological and ideological battle between evangelicals and Mormons on the issue. That speaks to the second part of your point. And some teachers feel they have to say, Im sorry, I cant answer that question because that gets me into the realm of religion. And so we werent motivated as a government to figure out what we knew and what we didnt know, particularly, what we didnt know. I just dont know religious people who believe the stuff that he attacks. Thats not that uncommon. And then another source is the fact that we have so many different forms of religion here that you can go find (laughs) everybody can find one for themselves. And this was an achievement of really the post-World War II period in America that you see in classics like [Will] Herbergs Protestant-Catholic-Jew, where the Judeo-Christian tradition gets invented in the 30s, it becomes popularized in the 40s, and it becomes pretty standard fare in the 50s to start to think about we have Catholics, Protestants and Jews. We dont know what sometimes I say in academia, the only discipline that doesnt know what religion is, is religious studies. And then theyre going to kind of be wandering around Modesto bug-eyed and trying to get flights to India? VAN BIEMA: Ive only had the opportunity to visit one class where this was being taught. I dont think hush-hush is going to work, and I think its smart that hes speaking out. Geography is important in religion. I think that thats a really important part. The Republican pulled out $20 and said, I didnt think you could do it. He doesnt know ignorant means doesnt know. It would be interesting to know what she left in and what she puts in and what she leaves out of the story. Tell me more about that. I think that you can hope for some kind of wide-scale restructuring of our public ed system. So it has an interesting combination of world religion, religious diversity and evangelical preponderance. With the correct toolset to understand how religion functions in human affairs, you can become more aware of the diversity between and within religions, confront stereotypes, and broaden your understanding of rich traditions across the world. Nothing like that. (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries. Im not saying you dont get misunderstood , but Ive never actually had a situation where I was talking about a religion story where I felt that I was just being manipulated except for by Dave Van Biema [of Time magazine] Im just kidding, Dave. I should say there are journals that do this, if you are interested in this. Religious Knowledge Survey, a nationwide poll conducted from May 19 through June 6, 2010, * among 3,412 Americans age 18 and older, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. Paul would be getting the olive branch from the dove and (laughter) Jesus would be parting the Red Sea. And various denominations of evangelical Protestants decided that they didnt want to argue about being Methodists and Baptists and Lutherans and Episcopalians. So just imagine how a person whos not will feel about it. Moreover, outside of contemporary politics, you cant understand the history of Western art without knowing something about the Bible. It would seem very weird to most in fact, to many Catholics who dont know the doctrine themselves. PROTHERO: Right. I think I see that from the beginning all the way through. PROTHERO: As you can tell from last night. PROTHERO: No. I think thats part of why hes in a bind. This is something that my colleagues talk about all the time. PROTHERO: I lived in Atlanta. Historians and social scientists have written about this relationship and about how the two may influence each other. And you can have that ethos operating in you. And its really comical in the way that how he knows hes a Christian or not. I just wonder how new that really is, or how it really has changed, in the sense that my scant knowledge suggests that thats always been a very important dimension of religion. JACQUI SALMON, THE WASHINGTON POST: I think that one point that needs to be made is how Americans learn or dont learn or get misinformation from the popular culture. You can come up with all sorts of Bible quotes. And as many of you know, the Southern Baptist Convention showed up at some point in Salt Lake City it was around the Olympics saying that Mormonism isnt Christianity, its fake Christianity. UNIDENTIFIED: I just want to say that its not crazy to imagine that religion is about helping the old lady across the street. I found it depressing to write books that took me 10 years and were bought by 500 people and read by 50 people, where my mother was 2 percent of the reading public. She was able to tell all this Moses stuff, including the parting of the Red Sea and the basket, and she was pretty good. Over the last few years, the idea of improving religious literacy has been gaining ground. The author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know And Doesnt, Prothero says the United States is one of the most religious countries on earth, but Americans know nothing about religion their own or the religions of others. It just doesnt seem to me at all to be the case. (Laughter.). Nor did the Buddha, nor did anyone else. But I guess . One is the silly and stupid objection that its unconstitutional, which just isnt true. In other words, I think that one reason why were so religiously illiterate is because were so enamored of forms of religion that dont value religious knowledge, and so I actually dont think they work the two work against one another.

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