I heard this story on the radio yesterday and found it interesting:
Understanding the Gospel According to Huckabee
It was very surprising to me that so many people from the freaking Bible Belt didn't know what I thought were clearly understandable Bible allusions. Perhaps I'm just a religion snob, but I most definitely knew what every one of the Huckabee quotes was referring to right off. Practicing Christians make up 78% of our country's population and out of those, I would guess that minimum three-fourths of them would catch Bible allusions and that out of the Evangelical and Southern Baptist types it would be more than that. And for my money, the 1% of Americans that are practicing Jews should have been able to get the Old Testament ones. Apparently not.
Granted, it's not like news reporters picking random people off the street is a scientific study, but nonetheless, I didn't expect the results they got.
My question to you, dear readers, is how would you do on a Huckabese quiz? I'm thinking through those that read my blog religiously (hehe)...mostly Mormon, with a couple Lutherans, a Methodist, a Jew...and it seems most would do well (probably not the Hindu, but that's understandable), but perhaps I'm completely off on my assessment of the average American's Bible literacy.
5 comments:
Yep, I got them all. Some people...
Crystal will be 20 when they get married. But still!
Huh...interesting article. Kinda sad, really. I attended a lecture on campus this week regarding research on teenager spirituality in America, and its results were similiarly discouraging. It seems that teens today simply aren't invested in religion. It is often present in their lives, but is like the "wallpaper", something in the background. And most people don't know what their religion believes. Typically most youth simply know that they believe there is a God, good people go to heaven after death, and that life is about being happy and the God is simply an optional instrument for achieving that when needed. I could keep going...but I'll spare you the details. But if you ever want a good discussion on the relative topic, let me know.
I got them all too!
-L
Didn't get the Daniel one right on my first try, I thought it was the stone cut out of the mountain with out hands rolling and destroying the guy with the armor who is made of different materials. So I missed the obvious story and went with something obscure, but at least I know the Bible decently.
I was reading your list of religions and who would get the biblical references and who wouldn't...and I was sad you'd forgotten me until I saw my parenthetical mention :-D!
You're quite right, I would have no clue with the Huckabee biblical references.
-Nishi
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