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Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't | 
 enlarge | Author: Stephen Prothero
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
New (3) Used (5) Collectible (1) from $7.94
Rating:  84 reviews
Sales Rank: 442838
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1
Dewey Decimal Number: 200.71073
ASIN: B001IDZJ40
Publication Date: March 1, 2007
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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 79 more reviews...
 Very disappointing December 9, 2008
Mr Prothero spends over half the book articulating a rationale for religious literacy, but does almost nothing to provide the needed information.
 Less history, more dictionary December 1, 2008
1 out of 2 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 4 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.
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