I did the online short survey. And while I think that people really are less literate about religion than what they should be, I think some of the questions were not that great. The when does Jewish Sabbath start (Friday at sundown) really doesn't tell us much. Asking what day is the Jewish Sabbath probably would have been a better question. It is a fairly fine point.

On the other hand if almost half of catholics cannot pick their own theology of the Eucharist, that is serious.

But to your point, most of the questions were not about bible. They were about geography or history or literature. I am all for serious study of scripture but that is not really what this survey was about.

There are too many categories for Christians in the survey which distorts the findings. I don't see the purpose of breaking it down into white protestant, black protestant. Hispanic catholic, white catholic. Why no white atheist, black atheist, Hispanic atheist? Seems very unbalanced unless you add all categories of Christians together.

Perhaps it is because we are so busy reading consuming Christian books, merchandise and the rest of this "flood of resources" that we don't actually read the Bible.

I would say this, to combat Biblical illiteracy: instead of programs within the church ministries to bring a service of "Improve your marriage" or "How to manage your money" or "How to raise your kids"... how about we teach the Biblical principles from the Bible? Having topical studies is all well and good... but don't we have enough "self-help" seminars in our world today? Do we REALLY need that many more?

Adam has it right.
This "quiz" is more a measure of a cultural/social knowledge of particular religions than a basic knowledge of each religion's core beliefs.
And considering the design of the test, I'm rather bothered by the conclusions that the "researchers" have come to, since their test does not support the conclusion, rather it supports the conclusion that "Christians are unaware of other religious social/cultural practices and influences including their own denominations practices and influences."
Catholicism is a classic case.
If you have never been raised a Catholic (I have) then you would never know about all the differing social and cultural practices that are involved in being Catholic (not to mention the traditions associated with each ethnic group in Catholicism) and attending Mass. And to be honest, I would be surprised if any non-Catholics were completely aware of all the varying Masses, feasts, and Holy days...not to mention the sacraments.
So...yeah, I think this "quiz" is poorly constructed for what is being "announced", and the conclusions do not accurately address the data collected.

ISTM that Sheerahkahn and Adam raise good points. I would be more concerned if self-professed Christians cannot accurately answer questions like "Who is Jesus Christ?" and "What is the greatest commandment in the Scriptures?" or could not give an accurate summary of the purpose/goal of human life in view of the teachings of the Scriptures as a whole. (It's quite possible this alternate kind of survey would yield equally disturbing results I suppose.) A knowledge of certain biblical, historical, cultural, religious and doctrinal details can be very useful, but this kind of "literacy" doesn't provide a foolproof guide to the quality and nature of someone's faith in Christ by any stretch of the imagination. If nothing else, this survey does perhaps suggest that the availability of a plethora of Bibles and Bible translations and study tools is not the key to a deep immersion in the truth of the Scriptures or a vibrant Christian faith! Of course, if we were aware of how the majority of Christians throughout history (and the Children of Israel before them) have been taught the Scriptures and learned their spiritual content (by hearing and memorizing it in a liturgical context, seeing it modeled in the lives of the Saints, and experiencing its reality through a living encounter with God through the illumination of the Holy Spirit in their own lives), we would realize this already.

It seems that the results are being misunderstood. This is a survey regarding knowledge of world religions and not just Christianity. There are several things that need to be fleshed out based on the results. Did Christians fare poorly on the Christian questions or did they do well there, but poorly concerning other world religions? How did people of non-christian religions do in respect to their own religion vs. others? To draw general conclusions about how knowledgeable different flavors of Christians are about the Bible misses the point of the survey.

I'm not sure it was noted, but it seems that people who have higher educational attainment probably would have scored the best, regardless of religion, if they received a liberal arts college education. I took the 15-question quiz at the PEW website and scored 100% by recalling knowledge learned in a World Religions course in college. The bible questions were a given from AWANA as a child; the others were not from personal experience with people of other religions, but simply from having learned about them in a classroom.

“Whoa,” I said. “Let’s keep it hypothetical, okay? I didn’t say you’re right, I said suppose you’re right. As a matter of fact, I never stole anything from you.”“That’s what I figure.”Why was he willing to pay such a high rent to stay at this temple? Because the Immortal Zhang was extremely efficacious and women flocked to him from far and wide to pray for sons. It was Vesperus's idea to treat the temple as an examination hall, and that was his purpose in moving there. Sure enough, he found that every day brought several groups of ladies to the temple to burn incense, ladies who differed from the women attending other temples in that there were always one or two of them in every ten who were tolerably attractive.