> Eugene Volokh posts a table from a poll showing that about 60 percent
> of Americans say they believe Biblical stories like the 7-day
> creation, Noah's flood and Moses' parting of the Red Sea to be
> literally true. <snip>
first, congrats to michael for a thoroughly legible post! keep it up!
:-)
now, on the topic of biblical literalism, and this relates to the antichrist thread and the bush and god thread. not to sound/read like a broken record, but i've made this kind of case on this list, before:
i've come more and more to the point where i don't think the bible as a text has all that much to do with our grasp of mainstream american christianity. to focus too much on the bible is to misunderstand where these people are actually coming from, even if it's ultimately also to understand the bible much much better than they do.
many of the religious students in my classes (who would say, for example, that they believe that god created the world in six days because that's what it says in the bible), actually know very little of the bible, and what they do "know" is understood through the tinted lenses of their catechism, bible study classes, or catholic/parochial schools. when they come to actually read the text in my classes, they can't believe it doesn't say what they think it says. and they have never ever had to grapple with the bible itself, and some of the truly profound questions addressed in it, precisely because of the role of tradition and indoctrination in their previous bible instruction (not to say bible "reading").
it is what i'm starting to call, riffing on W, "faith-based biblical interpretation". so-called biblical literalism is neither, in most cases. and when it is actually biblical, it is no more literal than any other reading -- it is much too sophisticated for that, despite its adherents' protestations (ba-dum-dum) that they adhere to the bible "literally". you might say that, in this context, literally doesn't literally mean literally. ;-)
on americans' poor knowledge of the bible, see, e.g., http://www.theologicalstudies.org/americans.html, from which, the following: --- In a poll taken by the Gallup Organization in October, 2000, 59% of Americans reported that they read the Bible at least occasionally. This is down from 73% in the 1980s.
How about knowledge of the Bible? According to Gallup [survey published in 1990], "Despite the impressive statistics concerning Bible reading and study, it is apparent that ignorance about its contents is widespread." 8
He gives evidence for this conclusion:
Only half of adults interviewed nationwide could name any of the four Gospels of the New Testament.
Just 37% of those interviewed could name all four Gospels.
Only 42% of adults were able to name as many as five of the Ten Commandments correctly.
Seven in ten (70%) were able to name the town where Jesus was born, but just 42% could identify him as the person who delivered the Sermon on the Mount. 9
Researcher George Barna has also documented the lack of Bible knowledge in the United States:
38% of Americans believe the entire Bible was written several decades after Jesus' death and resurrection (While this is true of the New Testament, the entire Old Testament was written hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus Christ).
12% of adults believe that Noah's wife was Joan of Arc.
49% believe that the Bible teaches that money is the root of all evil. (The love of money is said to be the root of all types of evil).
75% believe that the Bible teaches that God helps those who help themselves. 10 (((remember "a fish called wanda"? "the central tent of buddhism is not, 'every man for himself'." -- jf)))
George Lindbeck, the famous Yale theologian, has commented on the decreasing knowledge of scripture from a professor's perspective: "When I first arrived at Yale, even those who came from nonreligious backgrounds knew the Bible better than most of those now who come from churchgoing families." 11 ---
i'm trying to find more up to date numbers on this sort of thing.
long post and probably not very interesting to most of you, but i think it's important when we talk about american religion and in particular american christianity to get a better handle on what we're talking about. even those with "literalist" beliefs often don't know the text that they claim to believe "literally" -- and it *doesn't matter* to them, because they *believe* they know it . . .
of course, many "marxists" have this same problem, but that's another conversation . . . ;-)
j