My laptop crashed last week, so as it was being repaired, I immersed myself in my schoolwork since we’ve reached the point in the semester where it all seems to be piling on. Yet even as I was surrounded with discussions on proper Christology and post-exilic apocalyptic literature, I was not surprised to read the results of the recent Pew Religious Knowledge Survey. It is just part of who I am to seek religious knowledge, but according to this survey the general public can only answer 16 out of 32 questions correctly on a very basic religious knowledge survey. These weren’t questions about Augustinian views of atonement or the historical roots of the Hindu pantheon, these were ultra-basic questions necessary for a working knowledge of the other in a pluralistic globalized world (multiple choice questions like “Which Bible figure is associated with leading the Exodus from Egypt?” (Job, Elijah, Moses, Abraham) or “Ramadan is…?” (A Hindu festival, a Jewish day, The Islamic Holy Month) (you can take the quiz here)). There has been much said regarding the fact that atheists and agnostics scored the highest on the quiz, scoring an average 20.9 questions correctly while Protestants scored an average of 16 and Catholics 14.7. But, like I said, even as it astounds me, it doesn’t surprise me. The numbers are interesting, but they merely reflect the ongoing lack of desire for religious knowledge that pervades our culture.
One can obviously point fingers at the recent trends fearing learning about non-Christian religion here in America. The Texas School Board pushing to eliminate a seemingly pro-Muslim (and hence “anti-Christian”) bias in textbooks since those texts actually teach about Muslin history. Or the protestors of the Park51 community center who proclaim “all I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11.” Or even the families at the church I used to work at that got upset that we were exposing the youth to (as they called them) “non-Christian religions” when we took them to visit Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. That sort of prejudice and ignorance is sad, but willful. What troubles me is the ignorance of Christians of our own faith. Mike and I both discovered in attending mainline seminaries that most of our classmates readily admit to having never studied or really read the Bible. As my theology prof quipped recently after having to ask a Baptist student in the class about a scripture reference, “if you want to know which fork to use for dessert, ask an Episcopalian, if you want to know something about the Bible ask a Baptist.” It’s funny, but with the evangelical obsession with Bible memory, sword drills, and Bible knowledge, it’s a fairly true stereotype.
And yet even with our of our Bible knowledge, evangelicals often willfully avoid knowledge with the best of them. For all the Bible trivia we amass, there is generally very little depth in that knowledge. We do countless “Bible studies” where fill-in-the-blank answers and “what does it mean for my life” reflection questions masquerade as knowledge. And I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard pastors (or youth pastors) warn people about the liberal influence of education – as if just the idea of thinking for oneself is a threat to the faith. Or the number of testimonies I’ve heard that focus on how the person realized they trusted too much in their intellect and so had to let that go and follow God. It’s like the Kurt Cameron clip I saw recently where he actually said that to have faith we have to “bypass the intellect.” I was reminded of this stance this past week, when on a whim I pulled out the Old Testament Survey textbook I used at Wheaton College to compare it with the text I’m using in my survey class in seminary. I fully admit that both texts are biased, but it was sad to read how my Wheaton text willfully rejected most biblical scholarship. Instead of engaging with historical facts and textual criticism, the Wheaton text presented those arguments only to reject them. Almost every chapter is framed as – here is the evidence of scholars, but since we believe in the supernatural/unity of scripture/predictive prophecy we have to reject those arguments and just believe in the text as it is (as if that somehow actually exists). If knowledge falls outside of the tiny little box they were preconditioned to believe in, it is that knowledge and not the box that gets rejected and suppressed in the church. (although, I have to say, it made for a far easier Old Testament survey class…).
I think the church, in all its forms, is failing its members in this realm. Fearing learning about other religions or even about one’s own has crippled the body of Christ. The church doesn’t know how to navigate knowledge well. I understand why so many people do lose their faith when confronted with knowledge about history, or cultural influences on our faith tradition, or how the Bible came to be. When our faith is based on ignoring such knowledge, or even willfully hiding from it, its revelation can be devastating – especially when the church is utterly ill-equipped to provide a lens to help people understand that knowledge. We all always have more to learn and discover. What we think we know about God, the Bible, our faith, or other faiths is only just the very beginnings of what we can know. Fearing truth because it might force us to understand and love others or because it might challenge our presuppositions doesn’t seem like a healthy way for anyone to be living. To me what matters the most here is not whether people in our culture can answer certain questions correctly or not (although some of those Pew questions were rather basic), but whether or not we care enough to be continually learning and growing. And sadly, that is what I generally see lacking.