Will and I are really enjoying JD Hunter’s Democracy and Solidarity, which I read to him every morning. So far it’s been a broad, and insightful, overview of America‘s “Hybrid-Enlightenment.” There is a subject, though, that rubs me the wrong way every time it’s mentioned: religious knowledge.

Here’s Hunter:

At the same time that religion remained symbolically important to local and national civic life for the broad mass of Americans, it was, as it turned out, without a great deal of substance. It was a remarkable paradox. To take one example, Bible distribution increased 140 percent between 1949 and 1953. Moreover, eight of ten Americans believed that the Bible was not merely a great piece of literature but in fact the revealed word of God. Yet most Americans couldn’t name the first four Gospels and more than half couldn’t name one of them. Americans revered Scripture, but apparently didn’t read it.

There’s a broader point being made that I don’t dispute. And I certainly take issue with and lament disparities between religious conviction and quality, belief and practice, faith and fruit. But, as I’ve written about before, I’ve never been shown a correlation between religious knowledge and practice. In fact, my assumption is that throughout most of history most people have remained happily, if not beneficially, ignorant of the fine details that move them.

When in history has this not been the case?

I believe it was Stanley Hauerwas who said that most American Christians actually needed their bibles taken away from them. I have for years found it difficult to disagree, and I don’t think it would do an ounce of harm, neither to the truth nor to religious practice.