What do Americans Know About Religion?

According to a recent survey released by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, the answer to this question is quite surprising. It found that "atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tents of their own faiths." For example:

• 45% of Roman Catholics didn't know the church teaching that the bread and wine used in Communion were not just a symbol but actually become the body and blood of Christ.
• More than half of Protestants who took the survey did not recognize Martin Luther as the person who inspired the Protestant Reformation.
• 43%, or around four out of every 10 Jews did not recognize that Malmonides, one of the most venerated rabbis in history, was Jewish.
• Only 45% of Americans who responded to the survey knew that the Dailai Lama is Buddhist
• 27% of Americans responded correctly when asked if the major religion of Indonesia (which has the world's largest Muslim population) was Muslim.

Read more on this here