I found the study I was thinking of, Albrecht & Heaton, “Secularization, Higher Education, and Religiosity” had a fairly significant difference. But looking closer the date of that study is 1984. So it’s more than a little dated and that probably accounts for the difference. If American averages have caught up I wonder if it’s because Mormons tend to marry so young, biasing the figures on women. Whereas women in America in general have caught and surpassed males I believe. It’s interesting since at the time of the date of that prior study Mormon women were pretty significantly more educated than the national average.

One observation: the survey seems rather generous when it comes to showing knowledge of faiths other than Christianity (and arguably Judaism)… The survey’s questions about Christianity and Judeism looked to me to require a rather more intimate knowledge of those faiths than those touching on, say, Hinduism and Buddhism. It might have been more revealing if the level of knowledge tested for each religion were more comparable (I’m sure I’d have done a lot worse, for one).

My impression is that atheists, Mormons and Jews did best simply because all three groups tend to be well educated. (Someone mentioned stats adjusted for education but I couldn’t see where that was noted although maybe I just missed the obvious)

To add, there were some really weird things in the stats. For instance someone at my blog noted that only 93% of Mormons knew Joseph Smith was a Mormon. That’s kind of like an Evangelical not knowing Paul was a Christian. I mean I’m sure there are people that ignorant, but I kind of doubt they’d be the ones taking the survey.

The Great Awakening was a process of elimination.

Those 3 above would be the most difficult for a non-US person.

The Eucharist one would probably be the trickiest for a non-Catholic. I remember having that discussion as a young kid about how the Eucharist if taken literally was cannibalism, and in fact it was one of those pivotal points that made me see that religion was bunk, and simply a throwback to more primitive rituals from the dawn of humanity, with a thin veneer of modernity.

I’ve no interest in religion, but agree that with the above exceptions, the questions were trivially easy.

I used to pull stuff like that on my sister all the time.

Actually, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is one of the reasons why I was surprised that so few people were able to name Edwards. That sermon is included in just about every survey of American Lit.

Sad to see how few people chose Jonathan Edwards, as he is a really crucial figure in the development of American Protestantism.