WHAT do President Obama and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have in common? Both were embroiled in religious controversy during the last few weeks.
Some were scandalized to see Obama honored by Notre Dame, a Catholic university, given his views on abortion. Meanwhile, some objected to Rumsfeld's apparent use of biblical references in daily military-intelligence briefings, as was detailed in an article in GQ magazine.
Beyond the particulars of those events is a broader issue: The great bulk of the American public lacks the religious literacy to put these and many other controversies into a meaningful context.
Recent surveys of religious knowledge by the Gallup Organization and others have found that barely 10 percent of US teenagers can name the five major religions. About one-half of adults can name just one of the four gospels.
Many students apparently think that Joan of Arc is the wife of Noah. Only one-third could identify Jesus as the person who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. George Gallup once rightfully called America "a nation of biblical illiterates."
Many issues have religious dimensions, including Gov. Paterson's proposal to allow same-sex marriages, Mayor Bloomberg's support for stem-cell research, the debate over whether Islam is a violent or peaceful religion, the fate of Jerusalem in Mideast talks, voucher initiatives to allow public funding of religious schools and so on.
Americans casually throw about such phrases as "the golden rule," "Good Samaritan," "Promised Land," "olive branch" and "an eye for an eye" with little, if any, understanding of their biblical context.
While many know that the US Constitution bans the government from establishing a religion, fewer know that it also guarantees the free exercise of religion. Hardly anyone knows that the phrase "separation of church and state" doesn't appear in the Constitution; it is from a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson.
The inclusion of religious references in public pronouncements isn't new. For example, 46 years ago in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. likened his presence in Birmingham to the Apostle Paul leaving Tarsus to preach "the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners of the Greco-Roman world."
Today, how many students understand the religious references in this seminal letter or appreciate the role of his faith in motivating his leadership of the civil-rights movement?
Just as E.D. Hirsch made the case in the '80s for a broader cultural literacy, one now can be made for taking steps to ensure a basic religious literacy, starting with our nation's schools. The outlines of what this religious literacy might look like are set forth in an interesting book by Boston University's Stephen Prothero, "Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know -- and Doesn't."
Contrary to what some educators believe, the US Constitution doesn't ban the teaching of religion in public schools. In fact, the US Supreme Court has upheld the teaching of the Bible and other religious texts as long as they aren't taught in a sectarian or devotional way. In colloquial terms: "Teach it, don't preach it."
School-district officials are understandably shy about entering a broader debate on religion. But we can no longer pretend that this conflict-avoidance stance comes without a steep price.
James Madison spoke of "an intelligent and educated citizenry" as the cornerstone of self-government. When it comes to religion, that's not what we have now.
At a recent conference, I set forth options for starting down the path toward religious literacy, including the broader teaching of languages that make religious texts more accessible (including Hebrew and Arabic); the balanced re-insertion of religion into instruction about world and American history, culture, literature, geography and the visual and performing arts; the creation of religious charter schools, and an expansion of school-choice measures like vouchers and education tax credits.
Reasonable people can disagree on where we draw the line on these options, but standing still amid widespread ignorance isn't a real choice.
Thomas W. Carroll is president of the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability, NY Post, 5/28/09
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