Religion and Ignorance

To the Editor:

Re “Religion for $1,000, Alex” (column, April 27): As one who teaches world history to first-year college students, I can certainly testify that the ignorance and misinformation about religion that Nicholas Kristof catalogs is indeed widespread.

Many of my students are astonished to learn that there are two different “creation” stories in Genesis, and different accounts of Jesus’ lineage in the Gospels, and that these accounts contradict one another.

But Mr. Kristof’s implication that secularists do not care about religious knowledge is not fair. Secularists, including historians like me, care deeply about how religion motivates people’s actions, both for good and for ill. Secularists often try to show the similarities across religions, which makes the special pleading of any one religion for its role in history or its claim on the truth less compelling.

And many secularists wish that all people would study religious texts carefully, to see how they lend themselves to varied interpretations as well as to show the internal tensions and inconsistencies in many religious texts and doctrines.

ROBERT SHAFFER

 Shippensburg, Pa., April 27, 2014

 

The writer is a history professor at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania.

To the Editor: 

Nicholas Kristof’s column had me chuckling through the biblical bloopers. As a professor of religious studies, I’ve seen many of those same mistakes on exams and papers. I’ve taught in the Bible Belt and the godless Northeast, and curiously the bloopers are more apparent in the Bible Belt.

Yes, we need better religious literacy, but we also need to get beyond the quiz-show variety of religious knowledge.

Religion is not a set of beliefs and doctrines held by people who read texts. That deeply Protestant conception is the first thing that must give way if we are to find a better understanding of diverse religious traditions.

Instead of knowledge, people who are religious have expertise. That is because religion is a technology, an art and craft created in and through human bodies in time and space. The devout handle objects, sing, sway, sniff and see.

To learn about the religious lives of others, we need readings in the humanities, just as we need to engage the lived practices of those who may or may not have all the answers.

S. BRENT PLATE

 Clinton, N.Y., April 27, 2014

 

The writer, a visiting associate professor of religious studies at Hamilton College, is the author of “A History of Religion in 5 ½ Objects.”