Religious Literacy Culture in the Digital Age

Abstract

The major aim here is to analyze knowledge literacy in general and religious knowledge literacy in particular. Knowledge literacy can be defined as the ability to find, select, evaluate, and at the same time, effectively use the desired information. Religious literacy in Turkey can be addressed in two categories. The first category is of scientific and intellectual nature, and the second is of popular nature. These two categories recall the distinction between “gentry and commons” (elites and ordinary people) in classical Islamic sources. The scientific and intellectual dimensions of religious literacy manifest itself in the work of scholars in the faculties of theology. However, most of the academic studies of theology community can be considered as insufficient and incompetent in terms of certain qualities such as selecting and criticizing the information and using it effectively to draw conclusions, because of the fact that these studies are shaped within the frame of existing templates and knowledge that passed through a sectarian interpretation filtering.