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I was talking today to two men who teach philosophy at a large state university in the south, and we struck upon an interesting subject: do Evangelicals know the Bible? I am speaking here, not about the leading lights of the movement, but rather about rank-and-file Evangelicals of the sort who would make up the bulk of the student body at a southern state university. Stereotypically, they are Bible-worshipping zealots who memorized the Epistles verse by verse on their mother’s knee. I didn’t really expect that that would be the case. But I did expect, at least, that their familiarity with Scripture would surpass that of young Catholics. From what these men told me (one teaches the philosophy of religion, and the other medieval philosophy) this is not the case. Their students are every bit as Biblically ignorant as the young Catholics that I’ve known.
I remember arriving as a freshman at Notre Dame, and being appalled at the Biblical ignorance of my Catholic classmates. Though I was certainly no Bible scholar, I had at least a general familiarity with the more famous Old Testament stories, and with the parables of Jesus. Many of my classmates seemed to lack even this basic knowledge. Their familiarity with the Bible was somewhat like their familiarity with Shakespeare or Homer or the works of Gilbert and Sullivan: they’d heard of them, and could produce (or at least recognize) a few quotes here and there, but really, they knew almost nothing about it. (I’ve occasionally known young Catholics, when hearing me quote scripture, to knit their brows and then ask, tentatively, “What is that, Shakespeare?”)
We’ve discussed this before in earlier threads, and I think there are many reasons for it, among them poor catechesis, and the arrangement of the new lectionary, in which we often don’t hear the same scriptures more than every few years. I always maintain that you cannot learn the Bible just by hearing it at Mass. That way is much too fragmented for developing a real familiarity with Scripture, even if you go to Mass every day. People need to read the Bible on their own, and most Catholics don’t.
I had this idea, though, that Protestants do. And actually, I do think there is a difference among the more serious and intellectually inclined of each group. Bright and serious Protestant youths often will read the Bible seriously, and some of these really can quote Bible verses with the best of them. I’ve encountered a few like this in my own time. Bright and serious Catholics may read the Bible some, but they are also drawn to Catholic philosophy, the Church fathers, the mystics, Papal encyclicals, traditional devotions, and so on. Since Protestants essentially idolize the Bible, and Catholics embrace a much larger tradition, we should not be surprised if the Protestants know the Bible a bit better. Their clergy almost certainly would, since it would presumably comprise a much more substantial part of their education.
Maybe it really is true, though, that ordinary Catholics and ordinary Protestants are equally ignorant? I’m wondering if other people have relevant experience in this matter. Some of my high school friends had Evangelical inclinations, but otherwise, I haven’t had a tremendous amount of interaction with this group. Does anyone know of any studies that have been done regarding this question? (Surely somebody, somewhere, has made a formal study of it!) Are the Mormons the only ones that actually make their teenagers memorize Bible verses?
Here’s a study showing that Evangelical youth aren’t bible-thumping zealots. Rather, they are moralistic therapeutic deists. I’m from the South originally and I can confirm anecdotally that this is true. Contrary to the way they are portrayed in the media, Evangelicals are infected with liberalism–minimalizing doctrine and emphasizing those moral precepts that are already known by natural reason. I predict that in a few years you are going to see the so called “conservative” Evangelicals moving closer to current day Episcopalianism.
In a quiz bowl competition in high school, a Lutheran friend of mine and I deferred to an evangelical-fundamentalist girl on our team because we thought she’d know the answer to the question, namely, “In the Old Testament, the souls of the just went to the ‘blank’ of Abraham.” The Lutheran and I both knew the answer but assumed she’d get it. Wrong! It was kind of funny when we later both went over to this girl (whom we both liked) and chided her, “Bosom, Erin, bosom!”
: ))
Brad C., what you say is interesting. I always thought that the “WWJD” trend belonged to the sort of ideology you describe.
That’s quite an interesting study, Brad! Thanks for posting it. I’ve encountered this Christian Smith before, actually; I should have expected he would have done a study like this.
This is a pretty damning statement. Look at the conclusion, where he writes that, “it appears to us that only a minority of US teenagers are naturally absorbing by osmosis the traditional substantive content and character of the religious traditions to which they claim to belong. For, it appears to us, another popular religious faith — Moralistic Therapeutic Deism — is colonizing many historical religious traditions and, almost without anyone noticing, converting believers in the old faiths to its alternative religious vision of divinely underwritten personal happiness and interpersonal niceness.”
Ouch. And the really depressing part is that, as you go through, everything he says is completely plausible. Seemingly the teddy-bear God really is the favorite one in American society today. No wonder liberal academics have such contempt for religion.
I left the Catholic Church for evangelicalism in my teens, and only returned to the Church after I had been at university for some years. I have to say that the fact that the Baptists whom I had defected to really took the Bible seriously - not only was there an hour-long sermon on a scriptural topic every Sunday, but there was a mid-week Bible study and for a while everyone was given a verse to memorize each week - impressed my deeply. My family were practising Catholics, but we didn’t even have a Bible at home. Now I was reading it for myself and finding it fascinating. And, when I wondered why I’d never been encouraged to read it before, the Baptists were ready with an answer: “Oh, you know Rome has always hated the Bible because she knows it contradicts her doctrines. You know the Engish Catholics *burnt* stacks of Bibles in 1529 …?” Unfortunately it took me a long time to realise that Catholicism is *the* Biblical faith.
As regards whether ordinary students at a Southern State university really know their Bible - it’s hard for me to judge, since I don’t live in the South (or even in the US). But as an Independent Baptist I came into contact with quite a lot of American co-religionists. They were fundamentalist, KJV-only, total-abstinence types, and they were generally suspicious of state schools *and* state universities. Nearly all the young ones I knew ended up either going to Bible college or no college at all. In fact, my pastor’s concern when I announced that I would be studying philosophy at university - “You start getting into all that stuff and you’ll lose your faith” - was one of the things that prompted me to leave that church.
So what I guess I’m saying is that probably many nominal Protestants at Southern universities will not have learnt many Epistles off by heart, because the evangelicals/fundamentalists who do that sort of thing usually don’t go to state universities.
But I don’t know the situation exactly and I’m open for correction on that.
These are interesting remarks, Brian, thanks for sharing them.