He said that may be because of the extra demands that mothers in particular have faced during the pandemic, juggling working from home and helping children with virtual learning as workplaces and schools closed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. Women, who have led men in Bible engagement every year of the survey, now slightly trail behind men, he pointed out. The number of people who regularly use the Bible-at least once a week-had held “fairly steady right up to COVID-19, and then COVID-19 has messed everyone up,” Plake said. Most of that change has come in what the American Bible Society calls occasional Bible users or the “movable middle.” Those people are less likely than they were ten years ago to open a Bible in search of answers to their questions, according to the research. “Frankly, there’s just a much larger percentage of the American population over the last ten years that says they never use the Bible,” Plake said. In 2011, about 64 million people said they never used the Bible, compared with 87 to 90 million today, he said. The decrease in Bible use tracks with what the American Bible Society has seen over the past decade of research, according to Plake. “What we saw between January and June was that 13 million people in America who were previously really engaging meaningfully with scripture no longer were and that was a serious drop-off,” said John Plake, director of ministry intelligence for the American Bible Society.įrequency of Bible reading also dropped over the last year, with daily readers dropping from 14 percent to 9 percent and those who read the Bible several times a week from 14 percent to 12 percent, the lowest number on record, according to the survey, conducted in January with the Barna Group. The number of American adults the American Bible Society considers “Bible engaged,” based on how frequently they read scripture and its impact on their relationships and choices, dropped from 28 percent to 22.7 percent between January and June, according to additional data collected by the organization in June. That’s according to the tenth annual State of the Bible survey, released July 22 by the American Bible Society. Thirty percent say they have read several passages or stories.Īmericans also differ in how they approach reading the Bible.Read our latest issue or browse back issues. One in 10 has read none of it, while 13 percent have read a few sentences. Another 12 percent say they have read almost all of the Bible, while 15 percent have read at least half.Ībout half of Americans (53 percent) have read relatively little of the Bible. That includes 11 percent who’ve read the entire Bible once, and 9 percent who’ve read it through multiple times. One in five Americans, LifeWay Research found, has read through the Bible at least once. LifeWay Research surveyed 1,000 Americans about their views of the Bible and found significant splits in how familiar they are with the Christian scripture. The only time most Americans hear from the Bible is when someone else is reading it.” Many unfamiliar with biblical textĪlmost nine out of 10 households (87 percent) own a Bible, according to the American Bible Society, and the average household has three. “Even among worship attendees less than half read the Bible daily. “Most Americans don’t know first-hand the overall story of the Bible-because they rarely pick it up,” McConnell said. Small wonder many church leaders worry about biblical illiteracy, said Scott McConnell, executive director of LifeWay Research. And a third of Americans never pick it up on their own, according to a new study from Nashville-based LifeWay Research. Less than a quarter of those who have ever read a Bible have a systematic plan for reading the Christian scriptures each day. However, more than half of Americans have read little or none of the Bible. And many say the Christian scriptures are filled with moral lessons for today. Americans have a positive view of the Bible.
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