America, a Religious Nation, Knows Little About Religion Source: http://www.voanews.com/
The independent Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life says it asked 3,400 Americans to answer questions about their religious knowledge, and on average their answers were correct only 50 percent of the time. Survey results released Tuesday show that atheists and agnostics scored the highest. They answered about 21 of the 32 questions, followed by Jews and Mormons, who each had about 20 correct answers. ( Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists were included in the survey, but the Pew organization said too few of them took part to produce relevant data for each group.) The Pew study found that only 47 percent of Americans know the Dalai Lama is Buddhist. Less than 40 percent identify Vishnu and Shiva with Hinduism. And only about 27 percent know that most Indonesians are Muslim - even though that country has the world’s largest Muslim population. Pew researchers’ previous surveys have ranked the United States as one of the most religious nations among the world’s developed countries. About 60 percent of American adults say religion is “very important” in their lives. However, the foundation said its “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey shows that large numbers of Americans are uninformed about the tenets, practices, history and leading figures of major faith traditions - including their own.” The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life said the general margin of error the survey was about 2.5 percentage points.The Pew Research Center, the nonpartisan group that operates the religious forum, posted full details of the survey at www.pewforum.org. You can take the survey yourself on the their website. -- With best wishes S Chander
