> On this point, and I should preface what follows with a note that a LARGE
> majority
> of my students continue to attend services during college, very very few
> know
> much - if anything - about the difference between Protestantism and
> Catholicism,
> much less different Protestant denominations, or - of course - hardly
> anything about
> non-Christian religions.
>
Yep. I find this out on a daily basis, myself.
http://pewforum.org/Other-Beliefs-and-Practices/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey.aspx
Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.
On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for differing levels of education. This is the first survey of this kind that Pew is done, so there's no comparative data on whether things are getting better or worse. They are also still working on refining the questionnaire, to get better at asking the "right" questions and figure out what people do and don't know. But still, it is telling along the lines Alan mentions.
I think we talked about it on-list when it came out . . . j