High School Students Bible Illiterates

● Lutheran minister Walter C. Gerkin recently lamented the widespread Bible illiteracy among high school students. In doing so he observed, as reported in the Rochester (Michigan) News of November 14, 1956: “The religious illiteracy of our day was recently revealed by a questionnaire addressed to 18,434 high school students. 87 percent of them could not name three disciples of Jesus; and 64 percent of them could not name the four Gospels. . . . It is inconceivable that a high school pupil, properly instructed in the rudiments of Christianity, should score less than 100 percent on the above three questions.” The minister made no comment on how many of the illiterates had gone to Christendom’s Sunday schools.