However, what Powers and others mischaracterize as “religious illiteracy” is really the far narrower category of “unfamiliarity with the practices of certain present-day Christians in the United States.” Yes, many non-Christians have never heard “new King” in reference to Jesus — though, to be fair, some Christians also found it odd. And yes, our body politic would be well served if non-Christian liberals expanded their knowledge of Christian practice and vocabulary.
But that’s only a tiny fraction of religious literacy. True religious literacy requires engagement with the enormous variety of beliefs, practices, and motivations found in different religious traditions, and, for that matter, within a single tradition, or even a single church. Religious literacy requires awareness that religions have changed radically over time, and will continue to do so, often for nontheological reasons. And when it comes to politics, religious literacy requires thinking through the difficulties inherent to disputes over matters of faith in a religiously diverse community, and recognizing how our political system has developed in response to such difficulty. [...]
The Pew survey also provides sobering evidence that Christians, in general, are ignorant about their own tradition. Half of Protestants can’t identify Martin Luther; half of Catholics don’t understand the doctrine of transubstantiation. This is something I see reflected in my students: I teach students who, despite being practicing Christians, don’t know that Jesus harshly criticizes divorce and never speaks about homosexuality, or that the “Old Testament” was originally the Hebrew Bible, a collection of diverse texts compiled over time by ancient Israelites. For many believers it is the classroom, not church, that provides their first opportunity to reflect on the long history of Christian debate over whether Genesis should be taken literally, or the potential problems with having multiple translations of a divine revelation.
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