Luci

How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong -

Only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, and a scant half can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels. Twelve percent believe Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. This failure to recall the specifics of our Christian heritage may be further evidence of our nation’s educational decline, but it probably doesn’t matter all that much in spiritual or political terms. Here is a statistic that does matter: Three quarters of Americans believe the Bible teaches that “God helps those who help themselves.�? That is, three out of four Americans believe that this uber-American idea, a notion at the core of our current individualist politics and culture, which was in fact uttered by Ben Franklin, actually appears in Holy Scripture. The thing is, not only is Franklin’s wisdom not biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Few ideas could be further from the gospel message, with its radical summons to love of neighbor. On this essential matter, most Americans—most American Christians—are simply wrong, as if 75 percent of American scientists believed that Newton proved gravity causes apples to fly up.

Asking Christians what Christ taught isn’t a trick. When we say we are a Christian nation—and, overwhelmingly, we do—it means something. People who go to church absorb lessons there and make real decisions based on those lessons; increasingly, these lessons inform their politics. (One poll found that 11 percent of U.S. churchgoers were urged by their clergy to vote in a particular way in the 2004 election, up from 6 percent in 2000.) When George Bush says that Jesus Christ is his favorite philosopher, he may or may not be sincere, but he is reflecting the sincere beliefs of the vast majority of Americans.

And therein is the paradox. America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior. That paradox—more important, perhaps, than the much touted ability of French women to stay thin on a diet of chocolate and cheese—illuminates the hollow at the core of our boastful, careening culture.

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More: http://www.harpers.org/ExcerptTheChristianParadox.html

Yahzi

Mat 18:3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Where's the contradiction?

ELECTROGOD

Faith and knowledge are definately not reliant upon each other. Kind of like oil and water.

Splarnst

I would be interested to see a test of religious knowledge (Christian and otherwise) and see the results organized by religious affiliation. Anyone know of such online?

Bright Life

Other than Landover Baptist, you mean?

Alethias

Mod note: This is the proper way to reference an article on another website and evoke discussion without violating copyright law. Thank you, Luci!!

From my perspective as a former christian, there seems to be a distinction between cultural christians and true believers.

Many cultural christians have some very vague faith-related beliefs, but acquiring more than a superficial knowledge about their religion isn't an important issue to them. I would be very surprised if you could quote the same statistics concerning those who truly believe and don't just participate in their religion for cultural reasons.

SoT

seebs

I guess I'm not seeing the paradox. Many, many, people have no idea what Christianity's actual teachings are. So? What's surprising about that? Many churches emphasize sound bites and feel-good messages like "God loves us more than everybody else" because they are easier to package and sell.

I guess I don't see anything really odd about this. Depressing, sure. Even blasphemous maybe. But hardly surprising or paradoxical. It's actually what you'd expect; the underlying Christian message strikes me as fairly contrary to institutionalized power structures, and whaddya know, institutionalized power structures favor other messages.

Splarnst

Was that a response to me? Landover has some survey results like that?

pharoah

Luci addressed more within the OP than mere lack of knowledge. The paradox is that America's "me-first" societal norms are radically at odds with the teachings of Jesus, even though we're supposedly the most Christian of nations.

Stumpjumper

But what determines whether a nation is Christian or un-Christian?

Is it adherence to a set of beliefs of actually following the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth?

I would say that idealistically you should do both but if I had to choose which is more important then following the teachings of Jesus would be more important than worshipping God. In that sense, America is not as Christian as it claims.