The Pew Research Center last week publishedthe results of a December survey looking at Americans’ knowledge of various religions. When given 32 basic questions about a variety of religions, the average respondent answered fewer than half correctly.
To some extent, this is unremarkable. According to the Pew Religious Landscape study, based on a different Pew survey, more than 70 percent of Americans identify as Christian. In the religious knowledge survey, Americans scored higher answering questions about Christianity than about other major world religions. It is natural that, in a Christian-majority country, Americans know more about Christianity than they do about other religions. In many countries, most people probably know more about the majority religion than they do about other faiths. However, given the diversity of American society and the particular US role in global affairs, Americans’ knowledge of other religions — or lack thereof — is worth examining.
The survey identified several factors that were correlated with higher knowledge of various religions. Unsurprisingly, Americans with more education tended to score higher. While general educational level seems to be the most important factor, Americans who had taken a world religions class were more likely to know basic facts about a variety of faiths. Another important factor was personal interaction with people of other faiths; the survey found that Americans who personally know people from several different religious backgrounds tended to know much more about a range of religions.
One important finding is that greater knowledge of religions other than one’s own has a strong tendency to lead to more positive perceptions of other religions. The survey found that Americans who had broader knowledge of multiple religions had significantly more positive perceptions of Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, atheism and mainline Protestantism than those who lacked knowledge (this analysis excluded respondents who were members of those faiths). While the difference was smaller, people with more diverse religious knowledge also had more positive perceptions of Islam, Catholicism and Mormonism. The one exception in the survey was evangelical Protestantism, which received more negative ratings from people with broad knowledge of religions than from people with less knowledge.
The survey also found that many Americans overestimate the size of the US Jewish community, the US Muslim community, or both. Pew’s Religious Landscape study found that Jews are only 1.9 percent of the US population, with Muslims at 0.9 percent, followed by Buddhists and Hindus at 0.7 percent. Often, overestimating the size of a religious minority would have little practical consequence. However, at a time when some right-wing figures are warning about growing numbers of Jews and Muslims — as seen at the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where demonstrators chanted “Jews will not replace us,” and in multiple examples of right-wing activists alleging that Muslims are infiltrating the government and trying to impose Shariah law — it matters if many Americans have an inflated sense of these minorities’ numbers.
The very small size of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu communities in the US, relative to the wider population, limits the opportunities for other Americans to have personal interactions with members of these faiths. This is especially true for Americans who do not live in cities. Many Americans assume they know about Judaism because they have learned about the Old Testament, but they often lack any knowledge of the way that 21st century Jewish Americans live and worship. The Pew survey found that a majority of Americans know that Makkah is the holiest city for Muslims and that Ramadan is an Islamic holy month; however, many Americans’ knowledge of Islam is informed primarily through media coverage of extremist variations of political Islam and of warfare in the Middle East.
Greater knowledge of religions other than one’s own has a strong tendency to lead to more positive perceptions of other religions.
Kerry Boyd Anderson
Americans’ knowledge and perceptions of different religions have implications for society and foreign policy. From a social perspective, Americans’ views of Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism shape the environment in which Americans belonging to those faith groups live their lives.
It has long been clear that religious views affect US foreign policy. Christian affinity for the “Holy Land” and Judaism is one of several reasons behind traditional US support for Israel. Negative views of Islam, which existed prior to but were strongly reinforced by the 9/11 attacks, have created challenges for US relations with many Muslim countries. Traditional American distaste for atheism and outrage over the persecution of Christians played an important role in anti-Soviet sentiments during the Cold War.
The Pew survey, combined with other studies on the connections between public religious views and foreign policy, suggest that education on world religions and programs designed to offer person-to-person interactions, such as interfaith programs, would improve Americans’ understanding of a variety of religions. Such efforts could facilitate improved relations with other countries, both by producing a larger cadre of foreign policy professionals with knowledge of religions and a voting public with better informed — and likely more positive — views of other countries’ religions.
- Kerry Boyd Anderson is a writer and political risk consultant with more than 14 years’ experience as a professional analyst of international security issues and Middle East political and business risk. Twitter: @KBAresearch
