Religious Literacy
Victor Beaumont
Unitarian Universalist Church of St. Petersburg
July 22, 2012
Reading
Today’s Reading is an alphabet poem taken from the New England Primer of 1777. You
all remember it of course?
A
In ADAM'S Fall
We sinned all.
P
PETER deny'd
His Lord and cry'd.
B
Heaven to find
The Bible Mind
Christ crucify'd
For sinners dy'd.
The Deluge drown'd
The Earth around.
Elijah hid
By ravens fed
The judgment made
Felix afraid
As runs the Glass,
Our Life doth pass.
My Book and Heart
Must never part.
Skip the “I” because it was not part
of the Latin Alphabet
JOB feels the Rod,-Yet blesses GOD.
Proud Korah's troop
Was swallowed up
Q
Queen ESTHER sues
And saves the Jews.
Young pious RUTH,
Left all for Truth.
Young SAM'L dear,
The Lord did fear.
Young Timothy
Learnt Sin to Fly
Skip “U” because it was not
part of the Latin alphabet.
VASHTI for Pride
Was set aside.
Whales in the Sea,
GOD's Voice obey.
XERXES did die,
And so must I.
While youth do chear
Death may be near.
ZACCHEUS he
Did climb the Tree
Our Lord to see.
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
LOT fled to Zoar,
Saw fiery Shower
On Sodom pour.
MOSES was he
Who Israel's Host
Led thro' the Sea
NOAH did view
The old world & new.
Young OBADIAS, DAVID, JOSIAS
All were pious.
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
2
Sermon
How many of you recognized all of the Biblical characters and their stories in
the Alphabet Poem I just read? Please raise your hand. .. The children who
learned to read from the New England Primer in Colonial America recognized
these names, and their stories were as familiar to them as the exploits of
Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles and The Little Mermaid are to today’s kids. In
early colonial America, basic literary and religious literacy were one and the
same. Learning to read back then had a single purpose for every Protestant
American. You learned to read in order to read Holy Scripture, especially the
Bible. It wasn’t until the time of the American Revolution that reading took on
another responsibility – a civic responsibility – you learned to read to not only
free yourself from sin, but also to free yourself from monarchs.
Fast forward to 21st Century America. Only 10 percent of teenagers can
name all five of the world’s major religions, and 15 percent cannot name any.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all
of life’s questions; yet only half of American adults can name even one of the
four gospels, and most Americans cannot even name the first book of the
Bible. Perhaps the reason so many people believe that the Bible is the
inspired Word of God is that no one actually reads it. The Bible, the world’s
all-time best seller, has become the Greatest Story Never Told. What
happened?
My sermon this morning was inspired by Stephen Prothero’s book “Religious
Literacy – What Every American Needs to Know and Doesn’t.” Stephen
Prothero is a professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University,
and an expert on American religious history. He’s written several NY Times
best-selling books, and has appeared on the Colbert Report.
3
According to Prothero, the United States has become a nation of shocking
religious illiteracy. And, ironically, while the United States is one of the most
religious places on earth, we have become a nation of people who are
piously ignorant about the religions we fervently uphold.
He maintains that the separation between religious knowledge and religious
faith has never been greater than it is today. Faith based on knowledge of
religion has been replaced by faith in faith – on the liberal religious left as well
as the religious right. And, as we are all aware - in this post Waco, post
Murrah Federal Building, post 9/11 world - faith without knowledge can be
dangerous.
The history of America’s Fall into the abyss of religious illiteracy is
fascinating, but it’s also far too interesting and complex to give it justice in the
time I have allotted to me. Just how that happened is an interesting story and
one well worth reading. So instead of talking about how we came to such a
state of religious illiteracy, I’d first like to focus on Prothero’s strategy for
redeeming America from its Fallen state, and then consider what we in this
congregation might consider doing to ward off religious amnesia, and lastly
discuss my personal view on why I think it’s important for us to become more
religiously literate.
The author’s recommended plan for revitalizing religious literacy in America
might surprise you. He advocates for the teaching of one required academic
course on the Bible and a required course on world religions in public high
schools. Religion would become the 4th “R” – along with Reading, ‘Riting,
and ‘Rithmatic.
Now before you start uttering to yourself… “Separation of church and state”…
teaching about religion, and the Bible in particular, in public schools, is
entirely constitutional.
4
Prothero cites a number of cases in which the U.S. Supreme Court has given
its constitutional seal of approval to the teaching of religious studies and of
the Bible in public schools - provided that it is taught for its historic and
literary importance, and not as sacred text.
The landmark case that brought this issue to the attention of the Supreme
Court was Abington vs. Schempp in 1963. The Abington case began when
Edward Schempp, a Unitarian Universalist and a resident of Abington
Township, Pennsylvania, filed suit against the Abington School District in the
U.S. District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania to prohibit the enforcement of a
Pennsylvania state law that required his son, Ellery, to hear and sometimes
read portions of the Bible as part of his public school education. Instead of
reading the Bible, Ellery brought a copy of the Quran to school to read, and
for this he was sent to the Principal’s office.
The Court decided 8–1 in favor of Edward Schempp and declared devotional
school-sponsored Bible reading in public schools in the United States to be
unconstitutional. However, Justice Tom Clark, writing the majority opinion for
the Supreme Court in this case, included the following statement:
QUOTE“It might well be said that one’s education is not complete without a
study of comparative religion or the history of religion, and its relationship to
the advancement of civilization. It certainly may be said that the Bible is
worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities.
Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of
religion, when presented as part of a secular program of education, may not
be effected consistent with the First Amendment.” UNQUOTE
5
In other words, the Court was saying that teaching the Bible as literature or in
a historical context is consistent with the First Amendment, and doesn’t
violate the separation of church and state. The Court has also ruled
repeatedly that State Governments must not show a preference for one
religion over another, including the religion of secular humanism, and they
must neither promote nor debunk religion. Complete impartiality is the rule.
So the settled law of the land is that studying the Bible academically in public
schools is legal, reading it devotionally is not, but why dedicate an entire
course to the Bible? Why not the Quran? The answer Prothero gives is that
the Bible is undoubtedly the most influential book in American history, and
probably in all of Western Civilization. He claims that you cannot truly
understand American history if you do not understand the significant role the
Bible has played in the American Revolution, in the Civil War, abolitionism,
temperance, women’s rights, civil rights and gay rights. And you probably
won’t understand the 1100 references to the Bible in the works of
Shakespeare, or biblical allusions in the works of Herman Melville, Mark
Twain, and Toni Morrison, and even in contemporary works like Pulp Fiction.
So the muzzling of religion and of the Bible in public schools doesn’t make a
lot of educational sense, and more significantly, avoiding any discussion of
religion in schools might well be considered unconstitutional. You heard me
correctly. Ignoring religion completely in public schools is very likely
unconstitutional. In a case in 1987 before the U.S. Federal Court in Alabama,
fundamentalists argued that history and home economics textbooks were
giving preference to the religion of secular humanism. The Court agreed with
them and 44 textbooks and home economics books were banned from
county schools in Alabama, but the decision was reversed later that year by a
Federal Appeals Court. The interesting thing is that the fundamentalists were
right, but for the wrong reason.
6
It wasn’t that the textbooks were giving preference to humanism; they were
simply bad history. The textbooks stripped America of its Christian past and
identified the pilgrims as “people who make long trips.” The discussion on
Thanksgiving failed to mention who they were thanking. Christmas was
described as a time for family and special foods.
Many history textbooks ignore the fact that religion played a significant role as
a contributing factor that brought about the American Revolution. Many
Tories viewed the Revolution as nothing more than a religious squabble. The
colonists fought not only to free themselves from English rule, but also from
the Church of England, which did not approve of the congregational polity, or
self-governance, of our Congregationalist religious ancestors.
The word “educated” cannot truly be applied to high-school students who are
so lacking in a basic knowledge about our nation’s religious past because
religious literacy and cultural literacy are very closely entwined in the Western
Hemisphere. How many high-schoolers, for example, would understand, the
reference in the novel “All the King’s Men” to Saul on the Road to Damascus?
How many of you know who Saul was and what happened to him? Raise
your hands if you do…
Now some of you may be thinking – how about giving equal time to the
scripture of other religions? How about the sacred texts of Buddhism,
Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism? Prothero’s answer to that is that it would be
great if equal time could be devoted to the Quran or the Tao Te Ching. But
unlike these other sacred texts, the Bible is of sufficient importance in
Western Civilization to merit its own course. Treating it no differently from the
Zend Avesta of the Zoroastrians or Scientology’s Dianetics makes no
educational sense. There wouldn’t be enough hours in the school year to
give “equal time” to all the world’s scriptures.
7
But it would make sense to teach a course on all of the world’s other major
religions, where students could encounter some of the sacred text of other
religions such as the Quran or the Bhagavad Gita, or learn something about
the religion of native Americans.
Perhaps it’s due to a misunderstanding about the constitutionality of teaching
religion in public schools; or perhaps it’s simply a desire to steer clear of
controversy; or perhaps it’s because most people don’t understand the
difference between the teaching of theology and the teaching of religious
studies which are as different as teaching you to become an artist or teaching
you about art history. In any case, it doesn’t seem likely that religious studies
will be part of the public school curriculum anytime soon.
Part of the problem, according to the author, is that both those for and those
against teaching religion academically have taken extreme positions. Those
on the religious left won’t give up on their dogma that the study of religion has
no place in public schools; those on the religious right won’t give up on using
religious studies for proselytizing.
So until there is a consensus among education activists on the left and the
right that the teaching of religion academically is an acceptable solution for
all, the teaching of religion is left up to parents and congregations. And, by all
measures, that isn’t working very well.
This deficit of religious literacy perhaps explains why the second largest and
fastest growing religious group in America are people who describe
themselves as “spiritual-but-not-religious.” They see religion as the enemy of
spirituality. For the spiritual-but-not religious demographic, spirituality has
been reduced to its purely experiential dimension, stripped of any beliefs or
rituals.
8
Real religion, according to the spiritual-but-not-religious, happens when you
experience some sliver of the ineffable Something or Other. It’s do-withoutreligion religion, a form of faith that denies its connections to the institutions,
stories and doctrines that gave it birth – it is, in short, religion without
memory.
Prothero maintains if we, as a nation, lose our collective religious memory, it
won’t be long before we will be like France, one of the least religious places
on earth. Pretty soon we’ll all be eating frites instead of freedom fries,
smoking Gitanes, reading Sartre and Camus, suffering from ennui, poking fun
at the bourgeoisie and ordering from le menu Happy Meal. Quelle horreur! :-)
When I read the author’s comments about the loss of our nation’s collective
religious memory, I began to think about how we Unitarian Universalists
might have contributed to the loss of our collective religious memory, and
what we can do in this congregation to help us reconstruct the chain of
memory that binds us to our religious past.
Since Unitarian-Universalism is the consolidation of two historically Christian
religions - both of which have a long history in America - the place that I
believe we should start to become more religiously literate would be with the
two actual historical sources of our faith – Unitarianism and Universalism –
which, inexplicably, are not even mentioned in the six sources of our faith.
Our religious past has more of an influence on us modern UUs than many
realize, and what it meant to be a to be a Unitarian or a Universalist in the
19th century isn’t so vastly different from what it means to be a UnitarianUniversalist in the 21st century. For example, one of the pivotal theological
works of Universalism, the “Treatise on Atonement,” by Hosea Ballou, the
great Universalist minister and theologian of the late 18th and early 19th
century illustrates this point.
9
While Ballou is chiefly remembered for his exegesis of universal salvation –
that a loving God would never condemn anyone to perpetual damnation and
that all souls will eventually be reconciled with God - it is Ballou’s commitment
to reason and common sense in religion that strikes me as being very
contemporary and compatible with our modern UU faith.
He writes: “We feel our own imperfections; we wish for everyone to seek with
all his might after wisdom; and let it be found where it may, or by whom it
may, we humbly wish to have it brought to light, that all may enjoy it; but do
not feel authorized to condemn an honest inquirer after truth, for what he
believes different from a majority of us.” I can think of no better description of
our contemporary liberal religious faith. And once we become somewhat
familiar with the theologies of our two historic faiths, I think we also should
look at the theologies of the other great religions of the world, as well as
earth-centered religious traditions, and the philosophy of humanism.
The world’s major religions all have developed sophisticated theologies for
making sense of reality, and we should try to understand them. The word
theology, incidentally, should not scare you off. Theology, in modern usage,
is not limited to the study of God, or beliefs in a supernatural deity. It includes
the full range of human philosophies and beliefs, not just theistic beliefs.
In closing, allow me to share with you my personal view on why I think it’s
imperative for us to become religiously literate. Perhaps the greatest single
distinguishing characteristic of Unitarian Universalism is that each of us is the
ultimate source of religious authority. We can each define religious truth –
but only for ourselves. There is no higher ecclesiastical authority than the
individual.
10
That’s why we refer to Unitarian-Universalism as the free faith. We do not
share a creed. Instead, each of us is responsible for undertaking a free and
responsible search for truth and meaning. And rather than being held
together by a common creed, it is in the act of searching together for religious
truth, both individually and collectively, that we grow spiritually as individuals,
and as a community.
Our freedom to define religious truth for ourselves is a wonderful thing, but it
comes with a serious caveat. When we become Unitarian Universalists, we
are encouraged to build our own theology, our own personal faith. But many
of us - including me - lack the background and skills to do that. Many of us
aren’t used to thinking in terms of our life experiences in theological terms.
So it seems to me that if we were all to achieve a higher level of religious
literacy, and become more familiar with the theologies of all of our religious
sources, creating our own personal faith might become a little easier, and it
might bring us closer together, realizing that we actually share a lot of the
same theological common ground. As a faith, we’ve done a good job of
being inclusive of many different theological views; perhaps now might be the
time to devote just a little effort to thinking about what we share in common
theologically, to put the unity in our religious community.
And if dreams could come true, I’d really like us to start a Faith Development
course in the Fall to help us build a faith: My faith, Your Faith, and Our Faith.
May it be so.