Atheists Know More About Religion and Civic Knowledge Than Evangelicals, Says Pew Study

Image Credit: Pew Research

The Pew Research Center’s 2019 study, What Americans Know About Religion, tried to see how much Americans actually know about religion, not just their own, but others too. The survey asked 32 questions covering Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even a few about the Constitution. The results are a little unexpected: Jewish Americans scored the highest with an average of 18.7 correct answers. Right behind them were atheists at 17.9 and agnostics at 17. Evangelical Christians scored 15.5, while mainline Protestants and Catholics averaged 14.6 and 14, respectively.

Its interesting that the groups you might assume would know the most, those deeply involved in their faith, didn’t top the list. The article suggests that education might have something to do with it; atheists and agnostics tend to be more formally educated, Jewish respondents, as a minority group, may also have a practical reason to know more about other traditions; they’ve had to understand the culture around them to navigate it.

The survey also tested civic knowledge, like the Constitution’s “no religious test” clause, which says you can’t be required to hold any religious belief to serve in public office. More than half of atheists answered that one correctly, but only about one in five evangelicals did.

Still , When it came to the Bible itself, evangelicals led the way, averaging 9.3 correct out of 14 questions, compared to 8.6 for atheists. So there’s a kind of trade-off-nonreligious folks might have a broader understanding across faiths, but evangelicals know their own tradition more deeply.

Overall, the study showed that most Americans know some things about their own religion but much less about others. It suggests that understanding different faiths could help people have better conversations and more respect across beliefs.

Reference:
Pew Research Center. (2019, July 23). What Americans know about religion. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/07/23/what-americans-know-about-religion/