On 28 Sep 10, National Public Radio (NPR) reported that the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the results of a survey where Atheists and Agnostics scored the highest on religious knowledge. The report also indicated that Christian denominations, both Catholic and Protestant scored the least.

According to the segments of the Pew report published in the Examiner article, the survey presents questions as to a broad base of world religions. While it might be understandable that followers of a given faith may not have a great interest in elements of another, the results indicate that Protestants and Catholics lack some basic knowledge of their faith. For example, 45% of American Catholics do not know that Catholicism teaches that the bread and wine used in Communion is not a merely a symbol of the body and blood of Christ, but actually becomes the body and blood of Christ during the eucharistic prayer of the Mass. The survey also indicates 53% of Protestants were not able to identify Martin Luther as the person who inspired the Protestant Reformation, which is credited for the doctrinal separation from the Catholic Church which has subsequently fractured into an estimated 33,000 different Protestant denominations world wide.

At this writing the Pew Forum server was down, so the original report could not be examined. As with any poll, the temptation must be avoided to take results out of context or to over interpret results.

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