A Test Of Religious Knowledge

The United States is one of the most religious nations, although the number on non-religious persons is growing. According to the Pew Research Center, about 6 out of 10 Americans say religion is important to them and 4 out of 10 say they attend church at least weekly. The Pew Research Center decided see how much religious knowledge Americans had. The result is shown in the chart above.

The Pew Research Center surveyed 3,412 American adults between May 19th and June 6th of 2010, asking them all the same questions on religion. It may surprise some that the group with the most overall religious knowledge was the group composed of atheists and agnostics (answering an average of 20.9 questions correctly). I'm not surprised. The fact is that most atheists/agnostics have done a lot of studying about religion (both christianity and other religions), before finally deciding they could not believe in them (or the existence of one or more gods). At the same time, a lot (but not all) of the religious people simply accept what their religious leader tells them, without thinking about it much (or studying it).

Atheists also did pretty well in the three individual categories -- finishing first in religion in public life, second in knowledge of world religions, and second in knowledge of christianity and the Bible. Here are those numbers:

CHRISTIANITY & THE BIBLE (12 questions)
Mormon...............7.9
Atheist/Agnostic...............6.7
Protestant...............6.5
Jewish...............6.3
Catholic...............5.4

WORLD RELIGIONS (11 questions)
Jewish...............7.9
Atheist/Agnostic...............7.5
Mormon...............5.6
Catholic...............4.7
Protestant...............4.6

RELIGION IN PUBLIC LIFE (4 questions)
Atheists/Agnostics...............2.8
Jewish...............2.7
Mormon...............2.3
Catholic...............2.1
Protestant...............2.1