Name the first five books of the Hebrew Bible or the Christian Old Testament?Name the Ten Commandments?
Name the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism?
If you can't, you're not alone. We are a religiously illiterate nation, yet despite this lack of knowledge, politicians continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missed—or misinterpreted—by the vast majority of Americans.
"We have a major civics education problem today," says religion scholar Stephen Prothero. He makes the provocative case that to remedy this, we should return to teaching religion in the public schools.
Alongside "reading, writing, and arithmetic," religion ought to become the fourth "R" of American education. Many believe that America's descent into religious illiteracy was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on banishing religion from the public square. Prothero reveals that this is a profound misunderstanding. "In one of the great ironies of American religious history," Prothero writes, "it was the nation's most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road to religious illiteracy. Just how that happened is one of the stories this audio has to tell." Religious Literacy reveals what every American needs to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.
Reviews
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Taking its cue from Hirsch's benchmark NEW DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL LITERACY (1988), this is an important book for an important time. Addressing the need for Americans to be fully conversant in the essential teachings of all major religions (Christian religion, in particular, but not exclusively), the author makes the bold assertion that religion should be taught in schools. Prothero, the chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University, is oddly mild in his reading. His words are slightly clipped, and, even though he reads his own book, some emphases and stresses sound strangely off. He speaks too close to the microphone, or perhaps not loudly enough, necessitating extra amplification, causing many slight but audible whistles and chirps throughout the reading. S.M.M. (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
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All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period.
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