Americans score poorly on civics knowledge test
EDUCATION FEWER THAN HALF GET PASSING SCORE ON 33 QUESTIONS

My 1 didn't print. That was supposed to be # 139 in Strong's.

Concerned, I was using the definition of the Strong's Concordance. word number 39 in the Greek says a sect is heresy. As you know, cult was not in the King James Version. My Webster Collegiate dictionary says a cult is#1, Formal religious veneration-worship. #2 a system of religious beliefs and rituals, also it's adherents. #3 a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious. It seems to come from the same root words as cultivate and culture. Now, people seem to add a new meaning to it that is quite derogatory. Even though a couple of billion of us believe the followers of Christ are the one and only true church, the southern tribes of Levi, Ben, and Judah, generally referred to as one- the Jews, considered the Christians a sect, but they,(pharisees and sadducees) also called each other sects. About 88 A.D. the term for universal was coined-catholic- for the closest followers of Christianity. They were terribly persecuted and murdered. Then Emperor Constantine, joined with his worship of his Sun god and declared anethma on any one found keeping the 7th day Sabbath and demanded worship on his most venerable day of the Sun, which is the first day of the week. The Church was forced to do as the heathen demanded and Martin Luther started what now would be considered a cult, but he was simply going back to the original Christianity as best he could. Each break away from the Lutheran by today's wording, could be considered a cult, and each break away from the next church down the line. Now there seem to be thousands of churches that think only they have the truth. This has also happened with the descendants of Ishmael and many other religions. Wow! This is getting long. But I don't want any TAUGHT in public schools. Discussed as in some college classes or like I watch on one of the secular TV stations. I was allowed to study all known religions and picked the Bible after trying without success to disprove it.

Floyd, I don't know of any children being taught Muslim religious laws in a public school these days. Maybe my experience is different because of where I live & the particular friends & family I have. There is an elementary school a couple of blocks from my house & both a Mosque and Catholic Parish about 4 blocks away. It's a multicultural neighborhood & I've known the parents of children attending that school for almost 20 years.

It's quite different from the small rural school I attended in the 60's & 70's. In high school, the local Baptist preacher was invited to our school for a week to teach us about the Bible as part of our American Literature class. He brought a workbook for each student very much like those we used in Sunday School. There was no other religious text discussed, but it was 1977 & my peers and probably their parents would have been hard pressed to even recognize a yarmulke as a religious garment. I would say we were taught religion that week and only one religion was recognized, but it was a different time & a different culture.

On the sect vs. cult distinction, sect means “A religious body, especially one that has separated from a larger group”, whereas cult means “a religion or religious sect generally considered to be extremist or false, with its followers often living in an unconventional manner under the guidance of an authoritarian, charismatic leader.” (American Heritage Dict. 4th Ed)

It’s always been my understanding that the difference in a cult and a religion is that religion has a significant number of adherents in the population & wide mainstream acceptance of almost all it’s tenets & practices. For cults this is the opposite. Society only has a small number of adherents & there is no mainstream acceptance of a cult’s tenets & practices. In fact many Baptists still consider the LDS Church a cult.

I feel that the religious leaders of Christ’s time would most likely view his movement more as a cult than a sect, even though they had no word for cult (origin in the 1600’s.) They did have a word for sect & in my opinion Christianity’s early days could have been called either & it would still be correct.

Hope you have a great Thanksgiving & thanks for the discussion.

Concerned, In the King James Version, in Acts, Christianity was called a "sect". That is as derogatory as one can get. I think the college course was called Humanities. That has been almost 50 years ago so I'm not for certain. But now I read schools are teaching fundamentals of Islam and other religions. But the Bible is off-limits. Really, I never had a school teacher that knew more about the Bible than I did from the time I was 12.You may find this amusing; I was baptized when I was 6. The preacher was asking me a bunch of questions a few weeks before I was baptized. I remember thinking he sure is dumb. I didn't realize he was just testing me.

Yes, Floyd, and Christianity could be classifed a cult at some point in our past. I find the difficulty with religious teachings in public schools is that they have not been taught as part of history, but rather as a theology. No one is teaching public school kids about these former religious idols as a theology, only as part of European history.

And I would have been dumber than that 5th grader, even though I took a mythology class in college. I'm always amazed at how little I know & how much I don't.

On "Are you smarter than a fifth grader" last week the question was,"What is the name of the three headed dog that guards Hades?" That is a question about what we now call mythology but was once considered a religion. I find it strange it could be taught in public schools. By the way, the answer is Cerberus.I guessed Pluto.LOL

JT, good point about literacy. I consider myself a history light-weight. I only took required courses because I didn't like history much. Math & science were far more interesting to me. Like Randy, I had one semester of civics in 9th grade. I also had 1 year of American history in high school & 2 semesters of American history in college.

I scored a 91% on the test & was annoyed that one of those I missed was for not reading one of the easy questions fully. (that Life, Liberty, and etc. question.) I was surprised at the number of history & economy questions that were on this civics test, but maybe my definition of civics has not evolved to modern times.

Is our country really this pathetic(esp. those running for public office), or are we all just that apathetic?

Do they even require civics & American history to graduate from high school anymore?

J.T. I missed 2 for about a 94%. I missed the one about FDR getting approval and the one about Plato since 2 sounded reasonable and I picked to wrong one. It is hard to believe the average score is under 50% for our Congress.

Actually, I went to the site and took the test and got 84%. There was few hard ones in there, but really a basic test. If I had some study material, probably would've scored higher. Doesn't surprise me though because if people can't read and write, how are they going to learn other subjects.

Back in stone ages when I went through school, we only received one semester of civics in thye 9th grade. Thank God my older sister was a history teacher and one of my other history teachers assigned writing the Constitution as punishment in leui of paddling.

I know what is in the Constitution. Do you? If you did, you would be amazed at today's court system.

Separation of church and state? a myth, this country was founded as a Christian nation, but with tolerance of all religious ideas. Don't believe it? Read Washington's statement on the founding of the Thanksgiving holiday. Even the less religious Ben Franklin spoke often of God's providence in the success this nation.