Jon Stewart and Religious Literacy
22 03 2007New on The Revealer, published by NYU’s Center for Religion and Media –
“We Don’t Need No Education!” — Jon Stewart talks to Boston University
Religious Studies Chair Steve Prothero about religious literacy. Prothero
apparently thinks it’d be a good idea for American students, and even
American politicians.Doesn’t this dude know we’re living in the space age? How could understanding the difference between a Sunni and a Shia possibly effect our modern world? Watch the show to find out. Or, better yet, buy the book.
Newsweek had a pretty good article on Prothero a week or two ago. Reading it spurred me on to look into his book and whatever else he had to say. I have to admit that when I saw him speaking during the Jon Stewart interview on CC, it turned me off. He seemed a little…umm…up tight.
Come on guy, you are doing a book plug on freakin’ Comedy Central! Do you expect to get real airtime and a serious conversation? Besides the ominous red background with all of the floating religious symbols freaked me out.
Maybe not the best guy –and granted TDS is not the best venue –for that “serious conversation” but here’s why religious literacy IS serious . . .
Former HSLDA lawyer Scott Somerville and sincere enthusiast for his wife Marcia’s Tapestry of Grace classical curriculum, was interviewed for Gena Suarez’ Christian blogger kingdom and imo gave (inadvertent?) insight into the best reason for secular parents to think seriously about religious literacy — so Thinking Kids will know more about what a believer thinks than the believer does.
Once you decide for religious reasons to teach Homer, Plato and indeed all rational thinking as hopeless and empty (?!?) — imo it’s gonna take a lot of serious knowledge, critical thought and purposeful study for any young person, even mainstream Christian kids, to “understand” you well enough to safely coexist with your world view.
[Scott said}
“. . .why we have them read Marx and Nietzsche in high school–so they know more about what an unbeliever thinks than the unbeliever himself does–”