Have Faith, but Not Religion, in the System

In his Jan. 12 commentary, “A Nation of Faith and Religious Illiterates,” Stephen Prothero asks, “How did one of the most religious countries in the world become a nation of religious illiterates?” Good question, but an even better question is: What can be done about it?

The thought of being governed over the long term by people who believe very deeply in something they understand only superficially is frightening.

It also seems many of these same people do not really understand our Constitution and the principles, religious and secular, upon which this great country was founded and has endured.

History teaches us that all great societies eventually decline, sometimes catastrophically, primarily because of the ignorance, arrogance and hubris of their leadership.

I fear that, with our political climate, we don’t have a prayer of avoiding the same fate.

Charles J. Thompson

San Juan Capistrano

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Prothero speaks of a paradox in the fact that Americans are both more religious and more religiously illiterate than our European contemporaries. Atheists such as myself see no contradictions in this at all.

Perhaps if Americans were more knowledgeable about what religion is really all about, they too would abandon it, as more and more Europeans are doing.

Jon Nelson

Panorama City

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If church, synagogue and mosque participation does not correlate with much of anything of religious significance, as Prothero indicates, why do we bother to measure it?

I suggest we borrow the dictum: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Or the old standard: Keep your nose out of my religious business.

Rex Styzens

Long Beach