Illiterates

"The Christianity with which America is familiar is distorted, confused, and almost absurd." This sweeping charge is based on a study of 50 examination papers from a college sophomore class. Author of the study is the teacher of the class, writing anonymously in the current bi-monthly Religious Education. Almost all the students, says he, came from religious homes, had regularly attended Sunday school, and had just completed a semester's survey of religion which included five weeks of Bible study.

Out of the 50, "there were eight or nine religious literates." The rest generally were under the impression:

P: That there was no difference between the Old and New Testaments, but that the figure of Jesus appeared "here and there through it all, tempting Job, helping the prophets, and giving the Ten Commandments to Moses." It would seem that "years of Sunday school had conveyed no clear idea of the simple fact that Jesus is the reason for there being a New Testament. . . ."

P: That everything in the Bible happened at more or less the same time and place. "The students seemed unable to grasp the fact that some events in the Bible took place years before others, that some ideas were very ancient, that the events occurred in the faraway Near East, and that the writing is flavored by this locale."

P: That the Bible teaches "a single, clear, ethical code, applicable to everyday living . . . although they had read how Noah pleased God with the odor of a sweet-smelling sacrifice and how Micah cried out against [burnt offerings]. ... It was as though Jesus had never said: 'Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of old time . . . but I say unto you. . . .' "

The sophomores saw God as "a somewhat arbitrary yet sentimental old man who has a tendency to rap people's knuckles when they don't show him proper respect. . . .

"It is interesting to note that the seven Roman Catholics in the class shared these general ideas. They knew no more about their religion than the rest, in spite of the popular myth that 'at least the Catholics know what they believe.' "

In the current Journal of Psychology, a report by Harvard Psychologist Gordon Allport and James M. Gillespie analyzes the religious beliefs of 500 Harvard and Radcliffe students.

All but 6% of the men and 10% of the women had had childhood religious training; the majority said that they were still religious in practice. But half had no convictions about specific doctrines; 15% denied ever experiencing deep religious feeling; 25% professed orthodoxy of some kind; 20% were agnostics; 12% were atheists. But 70% said that they felt the need of some kind of belief.

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