Re: call crapaud on the wonkette thingy
The decline of religious literacy in America began with the \ufffdSecond Great Awakening\ufffd of the 1800s \ufffd a rejection of the Founding Fathers\ufffd Age of Reason and theological knowledge in favor of \ufffdpersonal relationship with God\ufffd quackery that led to today\ufffds brain-dead born-agains.
She may be right in dating the decline to the "Second Great Awakening," but is sorely misguided in connecting it to "personal relationship" religion. Historically personal relationship was the norm in the US, with most Christian worship being private.
In fact, it is probably the reverse. As people started going to church and looking to preachers as speaking for God, they had less reason to personally know the bible.
most of the evangelicals spend at least 2 days a week studying the bible (whatever flavor version of the month) to ascribe to them biblical ignorance is ignorant itaself.
There is a big difference between reading the bible and actually understanding it. A lot of fundamentalist Christians are like Muslims in that they have memorized large sections of their holy book by rote repetition even though they may not know the language it is written in.
Jay
