A rabbi, a Catholic priest, and a Protestant minister walk into a bar.  The bartender looks up and says, “Hey is this some kind of joke?”

This is funny (to some people, at least) because American culture has a long tradition of rabbi/priest/minister jokes.  This tradition seems to stem from the American experience with religious diversity.  The United States has always been religiously diverse compared to other western nations, and it is getting more so all the time.

But how well do we understand our religious diversity?  Some time this week, when the spring semester begins, I’m going to give the students in my Religion in America class a little unofficial quiz.   Here are some of the questions I will ask:  (answers are at the end of the post)

1)    What percentage of Americans are Jewish?

• a) 16%
• b) 8%
• c) 2%
• d) 1%

2)    What percentage of Americans are Baptists?

• a) 16%
• b) 8%
• c) 2%
• d) 1%

3)    What percentage of Americans are Muslims?

• a) 16%
• b) 8%
• c) 2%
• d) 1%

4)    What percentage of Americans are atheists?

• a) 16%
• b) 8%
• c) 2%
• d) 1%

5)    Which of the following has the most adherents in the United States?

• a)  Jehovah Witnesses
• b) Mormons
• c)  Lutherans
• d)  Wicca

6)    Which of the following has the fewest adherents in the United States?

• a) mainline Protestantism
• b) unaffiliated
• c) evangelical Protestantism
• d) Catholicism

I don’t know exactly how the results will come out, but my guess is that my students, like average Americans, will actually overestimate how religiously diverse the United States.  They will probably underestimate how big Protestantism is.   I say this because a study by Gray Matter Research  shows that the typical American is pretty good at estimating the percentage of Americans that are Catholic (24%), but misses pretty much everything else.  Most Americans peg the US to be 9% Jewish; the real number is 1.7%.  The typical American thinks Muslims make up 7% of the population:  the U.S. is less than 1% Muslim.  We think the US is 7% Mormon but the real percentage is 1.7%. Americans peg atheists and agnostics at 9%, but their real numbers are at 4%.

And Protestants?  That boring, old, run-of-the-mill, white-bread religious group is estimated by most Americans to make up 20% of the population.  The reality is that more than half (51%) of Americans identify themselves as Protestants.

Here is the breakdown:  75% of Americans are Protestant or Catholic.  Another 12% are the vague “nothing in particular” category (but are not atheists or agnostics), while another 4% are atheistic/agnostic. Jews and Mormons are 1.7% each.  Every other group (including Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wicca, Unitarians, Jehovah Witnesses, Spirtualists, New Agers, Native American faiths, and anything else you can think of) make up less than 1% each, for a grand total of about 5%.

So Americans tend to greatly underestimate the number of Protestants in American society and overestimate the size of many non-Christian groups.

I find this rather interesting and a bit curious.  I think it is a probably healthier to be aware that there is religious diversity in society than to be oblivious to any diversity at all.  But why do American overestimate the size of the smaller groups and underestimate the size of Protestantism?  Some possibilities:

— Has the emphasis on “celebrating diversity” in the past few decades made us pretty effective at saying that diversity is important, but does not do much to teach us about what that diversity really looks like?

— Do many Americans overestimate the number of Muslims in the US because the events of the past decade make them feel threatened by Islam?

— Does the same go for Mormons?  (My guess is that conservatives feel more bothered by Muslims and liberals feel more bothered by Mormons).

— Do many American Christians (particularly evangelicals) believe they are embattled and marginalized, leading them to underestimate the number of Protestants in the US?  Or perhaps they underestimate Protestants because Protestantism does not get mentioned in the news or other media very much?

– Why did Americans manage to peg Catholics accurately?  Lucky guess?

– Or do we overestimate the smaller groups simply because the exceptions stand out to us more?  Perhaps Protestants, like dogs, blend into our every day scenery, while any time a Mormon or Muslim appears in public, it is noteworthy, like a coyote wandering into suburbia.  (I hope it is not insulting to use the metaphor of a coyote to refer to Mormons and Muslims.  Does it help that I referred to Protestants as dogs?)

— How much does all this matter?  I am a bit concerned because there have been a few times in the past few years that I have heard people say that Muslims and Sharia law are a threat to the US.  That makes me wonder whether some Americans overestimate groups that they perceive to be threatening or “un-American” in some way.  If that is so, then we could stand to think more clearly about these things (we could always stand to think more clearly, actually).

I think I’ll pose these questions to my class (after they take the unofficial quiz) and see what they say.

Here are the answers to my unofficial quiz:

1 –c

2 – a

3 – d

4 – d

5 – c

6 – b