Americans Don't Know Much About Religion?

AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll entered an interesting story entitled Americans Don't Know Much About Religion on Sept 28, 2010 from which the excerpt below appears:

"A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major religions, while many respondents could not correctly give the most basic tenets of their own faiths.

The survey was recently released by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life aimed to test a broad range of religious knowledge, including understanding of the Bible, core teachings of different faiths and major figures in religious history. The U.S. is one of the most religious countries in the developed world, especially compared to largely secular Western Europe, but faith leaders and educators have long lamented that Americans still know relatively little about religion.

Respondents to the survey were asked 32 questions with a range of difficulty, including whether they could name the Islamic holy book and the first book of the Bible, or say what century the Mormon religion was founded. On average, participants in the survey answered correctly overall for half of the survey questions.
Atheists and agnostics scored highest, with an average of 21 correct answers, while Jews and Mormons followed with about 20 accurate responses. Protestants overall averaged 16 correct answers, while Catholics followed with a score of about 15. On questions about Christianity, Mormons scored the highest."

I find the overall results of the survey somewhat disappointing, especially when "atheists and agnostics scored highest" in various points on religion. But while I find the last line to be the most condemning commentary of professing Christians, it hardly comes as any surprise, at least to me. The great irony is, of course, that most all Christian faith groups identify the Mormons belief system as a cult. If that's so, why are they so much more knowledgeable of the Christian faith that their detractors? The answer may surprise you.