But before I get to that, the answer is, yes, there are places where this is being done. A sizeable minority think that Sodom and Gomorrah were a happily married biblical couple. I think if youre not trained to teach a world religions course, you shouldnt teach it, that we dont want untrained people to do it. It was probably Jesus, you know. VAN BIEMA: (Off mike) described in a much more broad-brush way to me, but its possible that they were not actually reading their standards correctly, in which case that would be fine, I guess. He doesnt know anything about religion. PROTHERO: Oh, I disagree. I think that you can hope for some kind of wide-scale restructuring of our public ed system. How does she read that story? Going back to the early part of the 20th century, they have never gone in whole-hog for this religion is about touchy, feely, loving Jesus and having him as your friend because theyve always had the sense of being in a fight, in an intellectual fight, with the liberals who are kind of trying to take over the country. And as many of you know, the Southern Baptist Convention showed up at some point in Salt Lake City it was around the Olympics saying that Mormonism isnt Christianity, its fake Christianity. Religion has and I also think that to call megachurches or church in general a social club is dismissive. I think thats true. My father doesnt read, unfortunately; that would have been 4 percent. So But there is this other way of talking about religion that doesnt assume that you believe in God or that atheists are idiots. JOHN DICKERSON, SLATE: Im struck that Thursday Gov. He needs to make us feel it. But this is what Im getting at, is that theres an ethos here that if you really want to look at the vibrancy and survivability of religion in a culture, thats what we want to look at and not so much whether these factoids are relevant. And then I think the ethic of religious tolerance here in some ways cuts both ways, but it makes it possible to be religious in a lot of different ways. Politicians are going to be invoking religious reasons for their public policy stances, and we, as citizens and as journalists and academics, should know something about religion so we can engage them, and also so we can I think, in some cases so we can flush out the demagogues who actually dont have a religious argument but have a kind of religious invocation where theyre sort of invoking God or invoking religion without actually having a religious argument underneath that invocation. What is Religious Literacy? - Religion and Public Life at Harvard And in some cases, their tradition doesnt even have any doctrines to share. So they bowed their heads, and he said: Now I lay me down to sleep. Why do we have to be different? They just wanted to do their thing, and so they agreed to table their religious their theological differences, their denominational differences, and they decided that what they were doing was fundamentally about fill-in-the-blank, abolitionism, good causes. So I think the religions are very different. So I dont think the place to do this is there. So thats one issue. Moreover, outside of contemporary politics, you cant understand the history of Western art without knowing something about the Bible. And I think actually going back to that is a great measure of the distance that weve come in accepting the argument that religion ought to have a place in public life, which JFK was very, very much ruling out. And so I think thats also a piece of transmitting religious literacy. Four Reasons Why You Should Teach About Religion in School (Opinion) They have an essay-writing contest on religion every year as a way to promote this. So people dont generally say to Hillary Clinton, interpret the Good Samaritan story for me, tell me why you think it applies to immigration policy. Core Principles Differentiations Differentiating between devotional expression and the study of religion First and foremost, scholars highlight the difference between the devotional expression of particular religious beliefs as normative and the nonsectarian study of religion that presumes the religious legitimacy of diverse normative claims. What happens in catechism classes and Catholicism is kids learn that they should help the poor, and thats pretty much the only thing they learn. I dont think Jesus came into the world to tell kids not to smoke pot. (Laughs.) I think, Steve, you said you expected there would be lawsuits. Its actually something Id like to work on if I had time and help and money. The problem of religious illiteracy - We Are Marquette I think, frankly, that these are projects that could have a lot of bipartisan support because and in fact, when I was writing my chapters on the proposal, I was very consciously thinking that, well, OK, the religious right people are going to be happy with the Bible course and theyre going to be a little nervous about the world religions course. PROTHERO: Yes, OK. DAVID SHRIBMAN, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE: Steve, having been born in Salem and being an editor now, I have to point out that uptight New Englander is redundant. It didnt seem to be such a good strategy for the Democrats in a country with 96 percent of the citizens believing in God to be the non-God party against the God party. You should not attack your imagining of what it is that they do and think, nor should you attack something that might have obtained in that tradition 1,000 years ago or 200 years ago. The most interesting thing that Ive seen lately is that in and my memory is like a sieve and Im going to say Alabama Im pretty sure Im right where this kind of dynamic actually unfolded and you had a bill that went nowhere. UNIDENTIFIED: Hell read the transcript and enlighten us. (Laughter.). This is a guest post from Rachel Rueckert, a member of the HarvardX World Religions Through Their Scriptures course team. And she could say, this is a story about this guy and he gets beat up on the road and a bunch of people walk by him and the Jews walk by him. Based on my experience of high school presentations of world religions, its the best way to make kids not interested in religion at all. They worship him as God, and their piety is centered on him. So I started giving this quiz to my students and I was really amazed. PROTHERO: Right. KRISTA TIPPETT, AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA: I also think that the history that you tell is absolutely critical to understanding this, and I just want to mention something that I think is a piece of the puzzle that we havent talked about, which is this strange divide, and this is certainly true within Christianity I think less so in Judaism between the intellectual life of the religion and the lived faith. I think its the way religion is talked about on television, in shows with macho names like Hardball and Crossfire (laughter) where you have the sort of idiotic person on the secular left who knows nothing about religion, like Christopher Hitchens, and then the sort of idiotic person on the religious right who assumes the only way to talk about religion is their own peculiarly religious way. There are two questions there. So this isnt name the Four Noble Truths or in what century was the Buddha born, weigh in on the debate, none of that kind of stuff. Asia-Pacific is the most populous region in the world, and also the most religious. The middle section uses examples of news reports and social media posts about Ferguson, raising important questions about such news literacy topics such as sourcing and verification, the role of social media, and the role of a free press in democracy. This is not an inconsiderable religious tradition, and so theres a contest over to put it dramatically souls in America, right, that is implicated in this election and so thats the problem. And that helped to clarify for me the central paradox in my book, which is that the United States is one of the most religious countries on earth, but Americans know nothing about religion, their own religions or the religions of other people. I read The Odyssey when I was in college and I liked it so much I read it twice, and if you were to ask me specifically about it at this point, Im not certain how much I could tell you. I spoke to the people who were involved in this, and I spoke to students. Im back on classes again in public schools. Now, that said, thats the assumption. PROTHERO: Well, if all the great 19th century voluntary associations one of the things that is intriguing about them, from the American Antislavery Society to the American Temperance Society, the Womens Christian Temperance Union, the American Bible Society, the American Tract Society, all these groups, voluntary associations, just a really wonderful and interesting thing about them is they were nondenominational, and they were led sometimes by Methodists, sometimes by Baptists, sometimes by Congregationalists. And in the same way, in the confrontation with Islam, I think or the dialogue with Islam, I think that you cant align the moral the differences in morality, the fact that the New Testament says you will have one wife and the Koran says you can have four wives. I think he needs to talk about his faith, and I think he needs to do it in a fulsome way. He shocked me with a nutshell version of it one day, and apparently, he seems to be working on Hinduism too, as well. And this gets replaced by a form of evangelicalism that is really much more emotional, less doctrinal, trust-the-head a lot less. Alex Wong/Getty Images The idea that liberals and cultural elites suffer from religious illiteracy is now widely accepted, by both the accusers and the accused. Its fascinating. And so there is information on this; I just dont have command of it. So the short, just Im completely sympathetic to your argument that whats interesting about religion goes way beyond morality, but Im a little skeptical about the claim that all religions essentially agree on morality. Public School Students Need to Study Religion - Education Week I think in the history of world religions, people arent running around in their heads ordinary people are not running around their heads with this whole basket of doctrine. And then the people on the left, the religious pluralism, religious liberty people are going to be keen on the world religions course and maybe a little worried about the Bible course. And students do really badly. MCCLAY: No, its actually very short. PROTHERO: Heres the question the way I would frame this is, if you want to attack a religion, you should attack what the religious people in the religion actually do and think. KATHLEEN PARKER, WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP: Yes, I agree with everything you said except one thing and thats (inaudible) interesting. And now the sermons are about the other day, I was in the Whole Foods and I ran into this friend of mine and she was having a really hard time and its sort of like life advice kind of stuff. Religious Literacies as Social Practice: A Latter-day Saint Perspective Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to KnowAnd Doesn't (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 1. PROTHERO: Well, the way that I frame it in the book is more participation in democracy, so its more political and civic. (Laughter.) They become really bad, and then they get into college and they catch up because American higher education is great compared to the rest of the world. And these are basically theological and religious conversations inside religious groups about what can we do about this problem. ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE, THE ECONOMIST: I wonder if you have any comparative data, particularly about the Islamic world, because if you look at the Islamic world, you have levels of illiteracy of about 50 or 60 percent. He doesnt know ignorant means doesnt know. CROMARTIE: David, a quick clarification of this point? Key West, Florida. And then finally, when they realized it was bad advice at the end, it was, well, I was an altar boy when I was 13. Nothing like that. There were these Bible wars of the 1830s, 40s and 50s in places, cities that started getting enough Catholics basically for the Catholics to start to say, why are my kids reading the Protestant Bible? media literacy, financial literacy, coding literacy) in education over the past 20 years. I think doctrine in theology is something that in general elites tend to do, and in 17th and 18th and 19th century America, there was this interesting situation where ordinary people did doctrine too. The central paradox of the book was clarified to me by an Austrian colleague of mine, who was teaching at Boston University with me a few years ago. 2010 U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey | Pew Research Center I think that Im not sure. I think one is that if that could really be done well, I probably would be good to go. We have unlearned community in general, and thats one thing megachurches offer. PROTHERO: Well, I was really intrigued to learn that the Democrats are starting to get behind this, as a way to sort of say, hey, were into religion too and this is a way that we can be into religion because were not afraid of a secular Bible course or a secular world religions course. There was a time when faith was all about knowing the doctrine and being enmeshed in that and being able to recite things and knowing the history and the context. I like that. DIONNE: (Off mike) an issue for the record that because I was struck a long time ago when you said, Bob Shrum, that atheist. With continued conflict across the globe, it is more important than ever to developreligious literacy. Therefore, developing our own and our students' religious literacy is an important aspect of multicultural education. Religion: why faith is becoming more and more popular - News, sport and This is the kind of stuff you get when you ask about the Bible, you ask about Judaism and Christianity. They were just part of it. I think we should have some information on which we can have these discussions. Its a great challenge. The one thing that it does is it gives the teachers some cover. And some teachers feel they have to say, Im sorry, I cant answer that question because that gets me into the realm of religion. They think Im in favor of slavery or something. And there were basically the bad secular liberals in the Supreme Court who ran religion out of the public schools and therefore made us a nation of religious illiterates. Is it to be a Christian if I want to pooh-pooh your friend who thinks to be a Christian is not to have premarital sex and to not smoke pot? So that challenge, I think I can meet. And the way that the Republicans, over the last generations, were able to attach to the good words like God and family and values and the Democrats seem to be attaching to less good words or less resonant words like rights and reason, things like that. Sometimes when I teach biblical debates about slavery, my students get confused. I think I see that from the beginning all the way through. And religious literacy is a loser along the way because it becomes increasingly less important, and, in fact, it becomes a barrier to ecumenical cooperation on things like abolition for people to actually argue or to know the salient differences, say, between Methodists and Baptists. When we genuinely build relationships with people who see the world differently than ourselves, we broaden our own perspectives and foster positive communication. PROTHERO: I think the fact that Americans are religiously illiterate fuels the high rate of religiosity. I wouldnt be upset if one of my students who took a world religions class came out of it a Buddhist or a Sikh or something. KAY: You mentioned Sri Lanka and the civil war there, Buddhists and Hindus, for example.
Tracy Beaker Autistic Girl, Homes For Sale In Hampshire County Wv, Articles W