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The United States is one of the most religious places on earth but it is also a nation of shocking religious illiteracyOnly percent of American teenagers can name all five major world religions and percent cannot name anyNearly two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible holds the answers to all or most of lifes basic questions yet only half of American adults can name even one of the four gospels and most Americans cannot name the first book of the BibleDespite this lack of basic knowledge politicians and pundits continue to root public policy arguments in religious rhetoric whose meanings are missedor misinterpretedby the vast majority of AmericansWe have a major civic problem on our hands says religion scholar Stephen Prothero He makes the provocative case that to remedy this problem we should return to teaching religion in the public schools Alongside reading writing and arithmetic religion ought to become the Fourth R of American educationMany believe that Americas descent into religious illiteracy was the doing of activist judges and secularists hell-bent on banishing religion from the public square Prothero reveals that this is a profound misunderstanding In one of the great ironies of American religious history Prothero writes it was the nations most fervent people of faith who steered us down the road to religious illiteracy Just how that happened is one of the stories this book has to tellProthero avoids the trap of religious relativism by addressing both the core tenets of the worlds major religions and the real differences among them Complete with a dictionary of the key beliefs characters and stories of Christianity Islam and other religions Religious Literacy reveals what every American needs to know in order to confront the domestic and foreign challenges facing this country today.