Author Says Americans Need Education in Religion
Mary Lane Gallagher - Knight Ridder/Tribune
Feb 13, 2008
Author says Americans need solid education in religion: Political, world events can turn on such influences
BELLINGHAM -- Americans can't fully participate in political dialogue or understand world affairs if they haven't learned about the world's religions, a religious studies scholar told an audience at Western Washington University Tuesday night.
"The U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the world," said author Stephen Prothero. "But (Americans) know very little about their own religion and even less about religious practices of other people."
As a result, Prothero said, Americans don't fully understand religious influences in domestic politics and don't have a clue how religion shapes world events.
Students in the United States should take a course on the Bible and a course on world religion before graduating from high school, said Prothero, author of the recently published "Religious Literacy: What Americans Need to Know."
"It's hard to engage in public policy debate without knowing something about religion," Prothero said.
Discussion on topics such as abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, even war and poverty, are all influenced by religious belief, he said.
But too often, he said, politicians make passing biblical and religious references that go unchallenged by journalists and the rest of the public because the public doesn't know enough about religion. So the references just hang there, "like a halo," Prothero said, as if they represent some sort of godly endorsement.
Students should also learn about world religions, he said, if Americans hope to understand world events, from political revolutions to the war in Iraq.
He's no theologian, Prothero told the audience, but he warned that religious illiteracy is as troubling as lack of knowledge of other subjects such as science, economics and history.
"Religion is one of the most powerful forces in world history," he said. "If that's the case, it seems odd to me that we would just shrug it off."
Prothero, chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, spoke as part of the President's Distinguished Lecture Series at Western.
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Copyright 2008 by Knight Ridder/Tribune
