When I lecture on speechwriting to college students, I sometimes ask them who said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

If I get an answer at all, the answer is usually Abraham Lincoln. And the answer is accurate. Except that Jesus said it first, in Mark 3:25: “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

The difference between Lincoln’s era and our own is that Lincoln could be confident that his audience would know that he was quoting Jesus, without him attributing the quote. No speaker today would dare make such an assumption.

Indeed, as Stephen Prothero notes in his current book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know –- and Doesn’t, the United States may be one of the most religious countries on earth, but it is also a nation of religious illiterates.

Prothero backs up this assertion with surveys documenting Americans’ ignorance of the Bible:

-- Only half of American adults can name even one of the four Gospels.

-- Most Americans cannot name the first book of the Bible.

-- Only one-third know that it was Jesus – and not Billy Graham – who delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

-- A majority of Americans think the Bible says that Jesus was born in Jerusalem.

-- Ten percent of Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

Significantly, the younger a person is, the less that he or she is likely to know about the Bible. And “born-again” young people are only marginally better informed than their peers.

This is serious, says Prothero, because young people cannot properly understand literature or history without a basic knowledge of the Bible.

According to Prothero, there are 1,300 biblical illusions in Shakespeare alone –- to say nothing of other English and American authors. The student who doesn’t know who Ishmael was, for example, will never comprehend the first line of Melville’s Moby Dick.

As for history, the arrival of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock makes little sense unless students understand that the Pilgrims made the perilous crossing to America so that they could enjoy freedom of worship. Similarly, they can’t fully understand the American Revolution without studying the “Great Awakening” -- the religious revival of the 1730s and 40s that inspired Americans to have no king but God. Nor can students understand the abolitionist movement that led to the Civil War without taking account of the role that religion played in turning people against slavery.

If Americans know little about the Bible, says Prothero, they know even less about the basic texts of the world’s other great religions. This is a serious handicap in a world where religion clearly matters a great deal.

Prothero argues that the Bible should be taught in schools, as it once was. Contrary to popular belief, there is no constitutional impediment to teaching the Bible as literature. The Supreme Court has ruled that the study of the Bible and religion in the classroom does not violate the First Amendment as long as it is presented objectively, as part of a secular program of education.

Prothero then goes one step further. He notes that there are now more than 1,200 mosques in the U.S., and more Hindu temples than in any country outside of India. So study of the Bible alone is not enough; he says that every U.S. high school should have a mandatory course on the religions of the world.

But is the study of the Bible and religion in the schools possible in an era of culture wars? Prothero says it is, but it will require that the Secular Left and the Religious Right reach a compromise. “The Secular Left will need to yield on the dogma that religion has no place in the public square,” says Prothero. “The Religous Right will need to give up its desire to use the public schools for proselytizing purposes.”

Such a compromise will not be easy to effect. But considering the potential consequences of our young people growing up in ignorance of the Bible and religion, we owe it to ourselves to try.