Religious Literacy Quotes

“A few years ago I was standing around the photocopier in Boston University’s Department of Religion when a visiting professor from Austria offered a passing observation about American undergraduates. They are very religious, he told me, but they know next to nothing about religion. Thanks to compulsory religious education (which in Austria begins in elementary schools), European students can name the twelve apostles and the Seven Deadly Sins, but they wouldn’t be caught dead going to church or synagogue themselves. American students are just the opposite. Here faith without understanding is the standard; here religious ignorance is bliss.”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“the disparity between Americans’ veneration of the Bible and their understanding of it, painting a picture of a nation that believes God has spoken in scripture but can’t be bothered to listen to what God has to say.”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“Religious illiteracy is more dangerous because religion is the most volatile constituent of culture, because religion has been, in addition to one of the greatest forces for good in world history, one of the greatest forces for evil.”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“what makes religious folks religious today is not so much that they believe in Jesus’ divinity or Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths but that they hold certain moral positions on bedroom issues such as premarital sex, homosexuality, and abortion.”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“But knowledge is power too, and textbooks have long functioned in the United States as the scriptures of our schools, which are themselves, as Frances Fitzgerald once put it, “Ministries of Truth for children.”93 Schoolbooks tell us what we need to know and what we ought to value. They tell us what matters and what can be ignored, what is worth dying for and what (or who) is to be shunned. They tell us what America is, both as an ideal and as a reality, and they interpret the wider world—the beaker in which the American experiment is forever bubbling up. This is no small power: telling children what to think about themselves, their country, and the world—telling them as well what to think of Islam and Christianity and Judaism or whether to think of religion at all. At least for the time being the gospel that these ministries are peddling is that religion is moribund—that God is dead.”
― Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“American undergraduates. They are very religious, he told me, but they know next to nothing about religion. Thanks to compulsory religious education (which in Austria begins in elementary schools), European students can name the twelve apostles and the Seven Deadly Sins, but they wouldn’t be caught dead going to church or synagogue themselves. American students are just the opposite. Here faith without understanding is the standard; here religious ignorance is bliss.”
― Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“you cannot really respect a religion that you do not understand”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“piety went public in postwar politics: “under God” was written into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, and “In God We Trust” became the nation’s official motto in 1956.”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“George Gallup has called the United States “a nation of biblical illiterates.”8”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“religion is now emerging alongside race, gender, and ethnicity as one of the key identity markers of the twenty-first century.7”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“nation”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't

“Americans are both deeply religious and”
― Stephen R. Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't