![]() And if it’s connected to church attendance and connection with Christian community, then those who care about connecting people with Scripture can focus their efforts there. But the decline in Bible reading isn’t inevitable or irreversible. ![]() “We believe that offering various options what equips readers to overcome the challenge of making time to read the Bible.”Ĭhristians may find the results of the State of the Bible report discouraging, Plake said. “We have learned that ultimately our job is to create Bibles that make it easier to get into God’s Word,” Bouma said. But the Bible market has increasingly developed products specifically for people who don’t read the Bible as much as they’d like to. This includes everything from Bibles used for personal study and devotions to gift Bibles, education Bibles, and outreach Bibles. According to the State of the Bible report, a third of those who never read the Bible say they are very or extremely curious about it. “A lot of people missing that reinforcement from others that can take place on a weekly basis.”īut even as Bible reading dropped dramatically in 2022, there is still a lot of continued interest in the Bible, from those who never, rarely, or seldom read it. But he designed for us to follow him in community with other believers,” he said. “Jesus Christ invited us to follow him, and that’s a decision we must make individually. He also believes that Christian community is critical for Bible reading. Or they’re flipping it open and reading wherever they happen to land.” “They’re looking up something when they need it or someone else needs it. “For most people, it’s almost more of a reference book,” said Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research. Only one out of every five Americans has read the whole Bible, while one of four has never read more than a few sentences. And they aren’t encouraged by other Christians sharing about their own Bible reading.Įven people who do read the Bible often haven’t read very much of it, according to research by Lifeway. When people are not in church, they’re not reminded of the blessings of Scripture and its importance for their lives. Isolation from other Christians has “lethal” impact on private Bible reading, he said. Some choose to participate online, but others have dropped out completely.Īnd at the same time, there was a sharp decline in Bible reading.ĭon Whitney, professor of biblical spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, thinks there is probably a causal connection. Pew Research Center found that nearly a third of regular churchgoers have not returned to church buildings. But the pandemic took a visible toll on church attendance. Only about 3 percent were not meeting in person at all, according to Lifeway Research. Most churches remained open, with an additional online option. ![]() The State of the Bible survey collected data in January 2022 as the omicron variant of the coronavirus was surging. “As we’ve been tracking and kind of digging into what really happened around Scripture engagement in 2022, we realized there were some big issues happening in the United States at the time that we were collecting the data.” “The elephant in the room is COVID-19,” he told CT. ![]() When regular services were interrupted by the pandemic and related health mandates, it impacted not just the corporate bodies of believers but also individuals at home. Plake thinks the dramatic change shows how closely Bible reading-even independent Bible reading-is connected to church attendance. Before the pandemic, that number was at about 14 percent. More than 13 million of the most engaged Bible readers-measured by frequency, feelings of connection to God, and impact on day-to-day decisions-said they read God’s Word less.Ĭurrently, only 10 percent of Americans report daily Bible reading. It is the steepest, sharpest decline on record.Īccording to the 12th annual State of the Bible report, it wasn’t just the occasional Scripture readers who didn’t pick up their Bibles as much in 2022 either. Now only 39 percent say they read the Bible multiple times per year or more. That percentage had stayed more or less steady since 2011.īut in 2022, it dropped 11 points. In 2021, about 50 percent of Americans said they read the Bible on their own at least three or four times per year. “What we discovered was startling, disheartening, and disruptive.” We double-checked our math and ran the numbers again … and again,” John Plake, lead researcher for the American Bible Society, wrote in the 2022 report. The data said roughly 26 million people had mostly or completely stopped reading the Bible in the last year. When researchers for the American Bible Society’s annual State of the Bible report saw this year’s survey statistics, they found it hard to believe the results.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |