Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters ordered public schools in the state to incorporate the Bible into lessons.

I’ve had a sneaking suspicion since college that Americans don’t know much about the Bible. One day, I was sitting in an English seminar on William S. Burroughs’ “Naked Lunch.” The novel is an absolute bacchanalia of drugs, violence and sex, so I was surprised to see Burroughs write about throwing pearls before swine. Good pastor’s kid that I am, I raised my hand and asked the professor why the author was quoting Jesus.

“He’s not,” he said.

I was cowed, but I pushed on. “Pearls before swine. I’m pretty sure that’s the Bible.”

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

The professor replied dismissively, “Not that I’m aware of,” and moved on.

He was wrong. Pearls before swine is a famous image from Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. But my professor wasn’t alone in his ignorance. Only about half of Americans know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, according to a 2019 religious knowledge survey from the Pew Research Center.

And that’s just part of the story. According to an earlier version of the survey, nearly 50% of Americans think........

© San Francisco Chronicle