Analysis for June 23, 2005
By Ken Camp
A significant number of American teenagers are “clueless” when it comes to a working knowledge of the Bible, and that means they cannot receive a quality education, a new report indicates.
A national report reveals 98 percent of the country's leading high-school English teachers believe biblical literacy gives students distinct educational advantages, but most teenagers lack enough understanding of the Bible to be able to receive what teachers recognize as a quality education.
“The Biblical Literacy Report” presents the findings of a study of high-school English teachers in tandem with a Gallup Poll revealing what teens know about the Bible. The John Templeton Foundation provided a grant for the research.
Marie Wachlin, teacher trainer at Concordia University in Portland, Ore., interviewed 41 of the nation's top-ranked teachers to determine what they thought students need to know about the Bible. The sample consisted of 22 women and 19 men from 34 schools in 10 states, selected for the survey based on referrals by colleagues, students and parents and on lists of high-school teachers of the year.
Forty of the 41 teachers said Bible knowledge gives students a distinct educational advantage. Ninety percent said it was important for both college-bound students and the general student population to be biblically literate.
Surveyed teachers identified 72 “need to know” terms from the Bible, such as “Ten Commandments,” “Garden of Eden,” “Golden Rule” and “Good Samaritan.” Wachlin characterized such terms as “the common currency of our language.”
The surveyed high-school English teachers overwhelmingly agreed Western literature is steeped in biblical references, and a majority estimated that fewer than a fourth of current students are biblically literate, meaning they are familiar with the books of the Bible, general themes and key characters in Scripture.
Without Bible knowledge, teachers said, students are “confused,” “stumped” and “clueless” in analyzing literature, Wachlin said. Biblical illiteracy limits pupils' understanding, limits classroom discussion and limits the scope of what literature teachers can teach, she concluded from her interviews.
Only four of the 30 public schools in the study-compared to all four private schools-offered a unit or course about the Bible, and economically advantaged school districts appeared far more likely to offer academic study of the Bible than poorer districts.
Wachlin and Templeton were joined by pollster George Gallup Jr., Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center and Biblical Literacy Project chairman Chuck Stetson in announcing their findings.
American teenagers may have a passing acquaintance with some terms in the Bible, but a sizeable number don't know what they mean, Gallup observed, citing a poll of 1,002 teenagers in May and June, 2004, that gauged their level of biblical literacy.
“The good news is that strong majorities of American teens recognize the basic meaning of widely used Judeo-Christian terms,” Gallup said, including many of the terms on the high-school English teachers' “need to know” list.
“However, substantial minorities lack even the most basic working knowledge of the Bible. Almost one out of 10 believes that Moses is one of the 12 Apostles. About the same proportion, when asked what Easter commemorates, or to identify Adam and Eve, respond, ‘don't know.' ”
Given a choice of four biblical quotations, close to two-thirds of the polled teens could not correctly identify which one was from the Sermon on the Mount, he noted. Fewer than half knew Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding in Cana.
American citizens need a basic understanding of the Bible as an influence on Western civilization, Templeton said. He cited speeches by Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin and Martin Luther King Jr. to illustrate students who lack basic biblical literacy cannot understand much public discourse.
The Bible Literacy Project, which compiled the report, is a non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to research and public education on the academic study of the Bible in schools.
Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, said the First Amendment presents “no barrier” to teaching about religion in public schools, provided instruction does not promote religion.
Associated Baptist Press
Ken Camp is managing editor of the Texas Baptist Standard.