SPIRITUAL FOCUS ON BOOKS July 16, 2007 Issue

RELIGIOUS IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

ROSALIE E. DUNBAR

WHEN STEPHEN PROTHERO, chair of the Boston University religion department, found his own daughter couldn't name a single book of the Bible, he asked somewhat desperately, "How about a Bible character other than Jesus?" She responded, "Tom."

In his new book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn't, Prothero takes story further. Perhaps eager to comfort himself, he assumes his daughter is referring to Thomas, one of Jesus' disciples, and writes: "... while he is known today as 'Doubting Thomas,' I suppose he might have been 'Tom' to his friends. Still, I must admit to some embarrassment over how little my daughter seemed to know ... about the Good Book."

To me, what's scary is that Prothero's daughter isn't alone. He cites his and other professors' experiences in religion classes where students thought Noah led the Israelites in their Exodus from Babylon, Moses was the recipient of the dove's olive branch, and Abraham was blinded on the road to Damascus. More formal surveys taken by pollsters like the Gallup and Barna organizations, indicate, among other things, that "ten percent of Americans believed that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife," and "only half of American adults can name even one of the four Gospels."