> <snip>
> At the next class session, I put the entire Matthew
> 6:24 quote on the board ("you cannot serve both
> God and mammon") and asked the class if they had
> ever read or heard that before. Two students had.
> "How many of you consider yourselves Christians?"
> Every hand goes up.
in grad school, i took a seminar on judaism, christianity, and islam in the middle ages. in the first session, one student -- ethnically jewish (ashkenaz), not raised "christian" -- described himself as having been "raised in a post-religious family in a post-religious society", explaining by way of this his ignorance of religious culture and scripture and various traditions. friends and i jokingly wondered if that meant, "post-literate" (carroll will tell you all about trying to read milton or shakespeare without knowing the bible, at the very least).
later, as a TA in the undergrad version of the same class, i came across students self-identifying as christian and as jewish who had read no or next to no scripture. these students often consider themselves vaguely religious rather than either atheist/agnostic or devout.
>
> I was astounded. I'm a fucking atheist, and I know
> more about the teachings of Jesus than people who think
> he's God. It seems pretty obvious to me that if you
> believe somebody's your savior, you'd pay attention to
> what he says. --And here's the thing that killed me:
> they just shrugged! Evidently, being a Christian
> has nothing to do with understanding or even caring
> about the teachings of Jesus. Are all of the various
> forms of Christianity in the U. S. today this
> superficial?
>
not to pick nits, but i think this is the wrong question. it's not the forms that are superficial, it's the people, and even that's not exactly right. the sort of christianity they practice is more a sort of social backdrop to the rest of their lives, combined with a general sense of righteousness and of salvation/immortality, rather than a religion in the stricter sense.
beyond that, there may be something to it when you talk about forms, only because i think that a lot of evangelical american christianity has reduced even being "born again" to renouncing sin/the devil and accepting jesus as your personal savior. knowing the bible or the actual teachings of jesus or any set of doctrine doesn't really enter into salvation or "being christian", except insofar as you ought to know better than to have premarital sex, commit adultery, or murder people.
this is telescoped, but in brief, there it is. i utterly agree that the pervasive ignorance of professed christians (and many jews, as well) of their scripture is appalling. otoh, i know a lot of devout christians who know the bible backwards and forwards. some of them can do more than just prooftext. many have no better actual knowledge of things than those who've read nothing.
j