Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Prothero
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  83 reviews
Sales Rank: 76281
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0060846704
Dewey Decimal Number: 200.71073
EAN: 9780060846701
ASIN: 0060846704
Publication Date: March 1, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: New & Unread Book with Remainder Marked- May Have Slight Handling Wear From Bookstore Shelf- Instock For Immediate Shipping
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Product Description
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.
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. 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 78 more reviews...
 Less history, more dictionary December 1, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Like others, I would have preferred more content in the encyclopedia/dictionary section and less in the 'history of American religious teaching section. I found the latter tedious and fraught with the author's often unsubstantiated opinions. His point on the evolution of Christianity into Morality was interesting, but I'm not sure why he thinks the two are so easily separable. In any case, I would look to Wikipedia in the future for more comprehensive entries on world religions and their many facets. It's more current, complete, and free.
Great Idea, disappointing outcome. November 17, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Author spent too long developing and defending his argument that religious literacy is essential. Anyone buying the book would either agree or be receptive. The second part, a dictionary of religious terms is interesting, but presented in dictionary form it easily becomes dry.
I would have rather he devoted a minority of the book (10%) to developing his argument, and then the rest of the book educating the religious illiterate. Perhaps chronologically, or by concept.
Perfect for the moron, the self-loather and those who hate formal education November 5, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
There mere title alone sets the author above you and your intelligence. Thank god I got it at the library where I discovered that this book is aimed at people with a high-school education...or lower. If fact, I think the fool wrote this book to boost his own ego rather than educate.
 A Wake Up Call from Our Secularist Slumber October 19, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Stephen Prothero believes that religion should be taught in the public schools. Why? Not because he wants to see Americans become more religious, but because he believes religious literacy is necessary in order for children to become effective, educated citizens. In Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know - and Doesn't (Harper San Francisco: 2007), Prothero makes his case, and it is a strong one indeed.
First, Prothero exposes American ignorance of religion, showing just how little we actually know about the world's religions. The statistics are embarrassing. Americans actually know very little about their own religious traditions, not to mention the traditions of their neighbors.
But the problem of religious illiteracy does not simply affect our view of ourselves; religion matters because it stands at the center of the world's great debates, wars, and life-perspectives. We are naive to think we can understand the battles of our day with only the most superficial knowledge of religion and its role.
Next, Prothero shows how little we know of religion compared to the earliest Americans. He trots out the McGuffey readers, Webster's dictionary and other classic works of American education in order to show today's reader how religious information was once inculcated into American youth. He then shows how this devotion to religious knowledge was lost. Interestingly enough, Prothero believes that the responsibility of religious illiteracy belongs primarily to the Church and the anti-intellectual attitude that prevailed after the Second Great Awakening.
Finally, Prothero makes a proposal for public education, in which every student must pass a course on the Bible and on world religions before finishing high school. Prothero is not advocating a return to the Protestantism of early America. He believes students need to be taught about the Bible, not taught the Bible devotionally. He also believes that a course on world religions should be taught, so that students have an awareness of today's world. The amount of time spent on different religions should vary depending on local context and the importance of a religion for each location. Prothero's book ends with a Dictionary of Religious Literacy, a remarkably helpful introduction to the major beliefs of the world's religions.
Prothero's Religious Literacy is unique in that it avoids two extremes. First, he seeks to avoid the danger of relativizing the religions, so that the distinctions are muted. He forcefully argues against making it seem like religions don't really matter and that all are equally valid. At the same time, Prothero does not want to see the Bible taught devotionally in the public schools (nor the Koran for that matter). His proposal is purely academic. Americans need a rudimentary knowledge of religious history and belief in order to be well-educated, effective citizens. Prothero also shows how his proposal stays within constitutional boundaries.
I hope that policy-makers will read this book. We are religiously ignorant to our own peril. It's time we woke up from our secularist slumber and began realizing that religion is still vitally important in world affairs.
Compulsory God Talk? No Thanks! July 28, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Prothero's well-written and engaging polemic consists of three parts: Part One, "The Problem," Part Two "The Past," and Part Three "The Proposal" (i.e. Solution!).
In Part One he shows, in considerable detail, that despite all the God-talk of the past two decades, Americans of all stripes and convictions are woefully ignorant about religious matters. Even "fundamentalist" types are not really literate, not even in their own church's traditions (i.e. born-again Protestantism).
This may be regrettable, but does it really matter?
Prothero, of course, howls "Yes!," and tries to detail the ways in which "Religion Matters" (Chapter Two). To begin with, it's part of Pop "Culture": he cites the best-selling `novel' The Da Vinci Code, (as ignorant about Da Vinci as it is about Jesus, not to mention Catholicism and pre-Christian Judaism). Also, "Religion Matters" because it is part of Presidential Politics; he cites Jimmy Carter and the Iranian Revolution! And Religion Matters because it is part of the warp ands woof of American History: he demonstrates this with the usual "history" of Puritanism and so on in American History.
In Part Two, Prothero continues this historical thread and provides a congenial, disneyfied view of "the" American Past. Predictably, he ignores the fact that Quakers hated Puritans, Puritans hated Anglicans, and ALL three hated Catholics. He ignores the anti-Catholic impact of the Quebec Act on the coming of the "Revolution" in New England; and downplays the impact of anti-Catholicism in the Second Great Awakening in the 1830s + `40s. He ignores the fact that the KKK began as an anti-Catholic organization. And he ignores the fact that after the Civil War, Catholics too were more than willing to join a united "Christian" front against Jews; just as Jews are now perfectly willing to embrace the Judeo-Christian babble against "Islamism."
"The Proposal" which Prothero forwards to combat American ignorance in this area is, of course, "religious" classes in American public schools. It should be regarded as part of our "civic education," he says!
It's not feasible. And it's not important. Why? First: Because "religious illiteracy" is the least important of America's many current areas of woeful ignorance. Math and Science top that list. A basic ability to read anything above the level of a comic book would also be a quantum leap of greater significance that "Basic Bible Babble." Second: there's no evidence that the public purveying of God-talk, especially in politics, is indicative of more deeply-held personal "values." It's a cynical political ploy. Want proof? Look at the lying, mass-murdering buffoon in the White House. Prattling about "the Jericho Road" in his first inaugural didn't mean Dubya cared about the needy; it meant he was going to mug the Poor so he could give to the Rich. Running away on 9/11; ignoring N'Awlins during Katrina; refusing proper military equipment to troops in combat; blocking medical care to veterans of his religious "Crusade" ... Where's the principled Judeo-Christian ethic in all of that? I would haul Clinton over the coals on the same grounds but you get the point: God-Talk is NOT evidence of a "religiously inflected" public discourse in America, as Prothero would have us believe; it's proof of religiously CONTORTED rhetoric to please the so-called "fundamentalist" base; nothing more.
Despite Prothero's anti-intellectual disdain for what he erroneously calls "Eurosecularity," the evidence suggests that Europeans are in fact more knowledgeable about religion AND more likely to be sensitive to its nuances in foreign policy. 85% of Europeans didn't fall for Bush's lies about Iraq; 85% of Americans did! That should tell us something right there Mr Prothero.
ALL the evidence we have suggests that it's long past time for America to slough off all this infantile "religiosity". Prothero's frustration with his students' ignorance is understandable; but that's why he's there ... to teach them the God Talk, if they really want to know. As for the rest of us? No thanks. We'll pass!
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