No Religion, Know Religion: Atheists know more about Christianity than Christians

From a new Pew survey: Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new Pew Forum 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. (The Pew Forum)

And this is why we need more Bible education, says Stephen Prothero:

How to hold politicians who pin their public policies to the Bible without
knowing something about that text?  And how to make sense of religious conflict in the Middle East without knowing something about Judaism, Christianity and Islam?

Believers and nonbelievers obviously disagree on the virtues and vices of religion. But all careful observers of the world should be able to agree on this: From time immemorial, and for better or for worse, human beings have been motivated to act politically, economically and militarily by their gods, scriptures and priests. Without making sense of those motivations, we cannot make sense of the world.

It is time to address our national epidemic of religious illiteracy. I have
called in the past for mandatory public school courses on the Bible and the world’s religions to remedy this problem. The time for such courses is now.