How Well Do You Know Religion?

The Pew Forum released the results of a study about American knowledge about religion. The results were discouraging, especially those that indicated no real difference in knowledge based on frequency of church attendance -- in fact, atheists and agnostics scored highest as a faith-affiliated group (in their case, unaffiliated group).

Here's a chance to take about half of the quiz and see how well you'll do.

I scored 14 out of 15 (embarrassingly, I seem to be unaware of the general religious affiliation of Pakistanis).

The average score was 50% right overall. More disturbingly, Christians asked questions specifically about Christianity and the Bible scored 50% (though Mormons got almost 75% as the highest subset of Christians).

Perhaps the questions were not a perfect assessment. I'm not sure that a majority of Americans should know that Maimonides was Jewish (only 8% got that one right). He was an important medieval Jewish thinker, but I'm not sure that's basic religious knowledge. The role of religion in school, the names of the four gospels, and others which were known by less than half of the respondents, should be better known, as should the name of the Islamic Holy Book (known by only 54%).

Polls that show people know basic facts (the name of key public officials, historical dates, etc.) rarely make news. Polls that demonstrate a lack of knowledge seem to make a much bigger splash. But it is sad to see how little people know about something that many claim is a central part of their lives.

The report on the full quiz and the results is here.

Coming Up Sunday, September 12

On Sunday, we will have the bonus film in our "Summer Blockbuster Sermon Series 2: The Sequel," featuring the classic summer blockbuster Jaws. Directed by Steven Spielberg, and based on the bestselling novel by Peter Benchley, the film tells the story of a local sheriff of a New England resort town trying to cope with shark attacks in the shallow waters along the public beach.

Here is the original trailer for the 1975 film:

"None of man's fantasies of evil can compare with the reality of Jaws," says the ominous voiceover on the theatrical trailer. In Jaws, the shark becomes the modern form of the mythological water monster that has been a threatening character in the stories of most human cultures -- including the American culture, most famously in the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick. The water monster is an ancient character, appearing in most ancient mythology and even appearing a few times in the Bible, usually as a character called Leviathan.

Leviathan, the great sea monster, is a terrifying thing that most have heard of, but few have seen or know much about. The fear is heightened by the unknown: how big is it really? what does it eat? where does it live? what are the warning signs that it is near? In the movie Jaws, the shark is virtually unseen until the end, which not only adds to the suspense but allows the viewer's imagination to create the horrible sea monster in the mind.

This explains why Jaws is scary. But why is the shark evil? Perhaps it is rooted in ancient mythology, where the sea monster is not only large and dangerous, but also persists in threatening humans, for little apparent reason. Christianity, in the book of Revelation, makes this more explicit: the sea monster is the devil himself, expelled from heaven. This certainly describes the great white shark in Jaws.

Our question for Sunday is to explore the nature of fear and demonization, as it is apparent in the treatment of the sea monster. What scares us and why? And what makes us identify something -- or even someone -- as evil? Both themes are evident in the movie Jaws and are in the Jewish and Christian scriptures, referring to Leviathan.