The power which binds: Why we should teach about religions in school

By Richard Schiffman

Religion ranks as one of the most divisive factors in the world today. Yet it has also brought billions of people together forging a sense of shared belief and unity of purpose across wide racial and geographical divides. The word itself comes from the Latin re-ligåre, which means “to bind back together.” So how has the power which binds become a force which divides us?

The answer is complex, but if we had to boil it down to one word, that word would be ignorance – a condition shared by believers and nonbelievers alike. America today is a nation of religious illiterates. Even many who attend worship services and profess to be devout may never have thought deeply about the tenets of their faith, still less wrestled with God, as the Jewish tradition exhorts its followers to do.

Leaving aside the question of God-wrestling for the moment, most religious believers have only a cursory knowledge of their own faith, and know next to nothing about the beliefs of other religions. This is something like learning geography by memorizing the names and capitals of all the states, but never finding out about other countries and continents which lie beyond the borders of the U.S.
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