Religious Literacy Chapter Summary

Religious literacy by Stephen Prothero is about the history and fall of religious literacy in America. The book starts out about America today and its current religious literacy. Many American believing that America has become secular but in fact is very religious, just not well versed. Stephen Prothero talks about the illiteracy in America and what Americans don’t know about their own religions. Stephen Prothero discusses the problem in part on, that Americans are strongly religious but also strongly illiterate in religious basics. He then moves on to the second part of the book and it is about America’s past religious literacy. This focuses on Christianity as other religions where not at prevalent in American society at the time. He discusses how …show more content…
But through religion these were taught and many bible stories were included in this book including the lords prayer and other basic Christian traditions. After the New England Primer, was Noah Webster’s Speller which was a book meant to teach children how to read it is like the New England primer but different. Next were McGuffey’s readers a series of books, meant to help children to read and learn the word of God. These books read more like a novel and used fun ways to teach the bible and reading. These books were also used in Sunday schools. Sunday schools were and are meant to teach basic literacy to children. Bible and tract societies were groups that sought out to make sure all Americans had access to the bible. The last way people learned religion was college. Most colleges were meant to educate clergy and had a denomination affiliation, or required religious classes for graduates. Religion was taught in just about everything and was easy to seek out if one wanted to expand ones knowledge. Now not many colleges even offer religious degrees. This brings Prothero to the fall of religious literacy in