Lynn and Prothero: "Religious Literacy" Smackdown
Americans United head Rev. Barry Lynn and Boston University Religion Department chair Stephen Prothero went head-to-head in an online debate hosted by the Washington Post's On Faith site. I posted earlier about Prothero's proposal, outlined in his new book Religious Literacy, to mandate public school courses in the Bible and world religions as a way to improve Americans' general knowledge about religion.
As my earlier post indicates, even though I believe religious literacy can be constitutionally taught, I tend to agree in this case with Rev. Lynn's primary points: that there's a difference between mandatory and elective courses involving religion; that there's a difference between teaching "world religions" and teaching "The Bible;" and that in any case the actual practical application would be much thornier than Prothero seems willing to acknowledge, no matter how nice the goal sounds. Click on the extended entry below for a couple quotes from their argument conversation.
Excerpt from the On Faith debate between AU's Barry Lynn and author Stephen Prothero:
Barry Lynn: Since the overwhelming majority of public school teachers are Christians and virtually none of them have taken many academic classes in world religion, would a Muslim parent feel comfortable having the teacher "explain" Islam to the children? I have discussed this with many parents of "minority" (in the U.S at least) faiths, and they are very disturbed by this possibility. And what version of "Mormonism" would you talk about? The sects that continue to practice polygamy or the main corpus of believers who do not?
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Stephen Prothero: [A]nother generation of citizens lacking the most basic literacy about Christianity, Islam, and other religions--is simply not acceptable to me. What version of Mormonism would I talk about? Probably the most influential and largest one. That seems reasonable. Ditto for Islam and Hinduism and Buddhism. You can only cover the basics so do the largest groups.
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Barry Lynn: No, no, no. By saying that we'll only talk about the "biggest" group in a faith tradition a public school would be taking a theological position on some of the most serious religious questions in world religious history. And if you want to rip communities apart, just tell the PTA that you'll be teaching about the "largest" Christian groups (Amish need not apply).