7/20/2007

Religious Literacy

I'm reading Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--and Doesn't. It came recommended by the head of San Francisco Friends School. It's the kind of book where I can read the introduction and first two chapters and have a sense of the thesis: Americans are woefully ignorant of the world's religions, their own and others'. Given the other things going on for us right now, I probably won't finish it.

This quote stood out for me, page 53: "While... those on the right are more likely to be worried about a lack of attention to Puritan New England, critics on the left want to give Roger Williams, William Penn, and other scions of religious liberty their due. A textbook review published by People for the American Way said, "While history textbooks talk about the existence of religious diversity in America, they do not show it.... The Quakers are shown giving us religious freedom and abolition, and then apparently disappear off the face of the earth."

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