This Pew table shows that Hispanics have much less religious knowledge than whites; their mean is even lower than that of blacks. One reason why Hispanics, most of whom are Catholic, are not socially conservative is that they do not even know what they are supposed to believe. I place some of the blame on the Church. Republicans who argue that we want Mexican immigrants because they are Catholic and therefore conservative are ignorant or dishonest.
Of course they have less religious knowledge, that's what their church wants. The older I get, the more disgusted I am with organized religion, and the more convinced I am that I don't need to go into a special building to have a conversation with God. A middleman, who's nothing more than an employee of a large not-for-profit (hah!) corporation just gets in the way.
ReplyDeleteInteresting that women know less than men despite being more religious as a group. Akin to the performance advantage of atheists and agnostics on this subject - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/09/religious-illiteracy-is-the-norm/.
ReplyDeleteHispanic Catholics did know the doctrine of transubstantiation better than any non-Catholic group and their performance in identifying Mother Teresa as Catholic was 1% above the mean, but otherwise as a group, they bombed the test across the board.
ReplyDeleteBlack Protestants did fairly well on questions concerning Biblical material, but outside of those, their performance was similar to the Hispanic Catholics.
Also, unless the Gallup poll has a type of table named after it, I believe you meant to refer to the Pew Research Group.
ReplyDeleteFixed it--thanks.
ReplyDeleteI was discussing the poll on another site. The way I interpreted the results is that they mostly reflect differences is average g and only secondarily reflect religious training. I guessed that the reason black Americans outscored mestizos was because for many mestizos English is a second language.
ReplyDeleteAm I cracked?
Via the Monkey Cage, a paper on the "conservatism" of religious conservatives.
ReplyDeleteXenophon Hendrix' point ("I interpret the results [to] mostly reflect differences is average g") seems confirmed by this:
ReplyDelete'Education' Impact, All Else Being Equal.
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