FoxNews is running an article on a recent survey about Americans and their religious literacy (to coin a term). The numbers are, of course, depressing on first glance. Out of 32 basic knowledge questions...
Atheists and agnostics scored highest, with an average of 21 correct answers, while Jews and Mormons followed with about 20 accurate responses. Protestants overall averaged 16 correct answers, while Catholics followed with a score of about 15.
This looks pretty bleak, if not embarrassing.
But perhaps it is worth thinking about these numbers. These are averages for the group, but the article did not indicate how many people were surveyed from each group. It only pointed out that Pew surveyed some 3400 people. How many of those people were atheist/agnostic? How many were Catholic? Or, to get to the heart of the matter, how many Catholics scored above 15 and how many scored below 15?
What would it mean if Catholics scored lower than atheists on average, but that there are an equal number of Catholics that scored as well as atheists?
My assumption is that atheists, Mormons, and Jews are smaller minorities compared to Protestants (very broad) and Catholics. But even among Protestantism, you are usually dealing with collections of small Churches.
My point here is that what we might be witnessing has less to do with a stupidity among Catholics, but a heightened awareness to religion among smaller faith groups. It's almost as if their is some kind of law of religious awareness density. The more people that are in the faith, the more diffuse the knowledge becomes. The less people in the faith, the more concentrated that knowledge becomes.
Obviously, this doesn't have to be the case. It might also have to do with the fact that Mormons are aggressive missionaries, so they have to be aware of the competition. Likewise, atheists feel strongly enough about the issue that they need to know what they are arguing against. Catholics, however, haven't been very motivated on the evangelization front, and they don't, on the whole, seem to feel particularly isolated...so there might be less sense of urgency to acquire religious knowledge.
Still, it is depressing to see the Pew survey remind us that 45% of Catholics don't know what transubstantiation is. That certainly speaks to a failure in education.
Also odd, the article failed to mention where Muslims scored on the survey.

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