Do you want to read the Bible more than you have in the past? If so, you're not alone. Have you been successful in reading the Bible more often? Then you are nearly alone.
That's very sad. Especially when you see what's coming in this article and in the rest of the series
We're going to continue looking at the Barna Research study commissioned by the American Bible Society. The study is titled: State of the Bible 2017: Top Findings. If you haven't read it yet, the first article is Searching for hope - but not finding it? The entire series (still being written at this time) is called State of the Bible.
There are seven sections in the detailed findings. We're going to look at the first one in this article - Bible Engagement
Most Americans Desire Greater Bible Use
This is one of the most interesting findings in Section 1 of the study.
More than half of all adults wish they read the Bible more often (58%). This is down slightly from 2016 (61%). Each segment expresses a desire for more Bible reading, in fact, one in five Skeptics (22%) and one in five non-Christians (21%) wish they read or listened to the Bible more. Also, desire is particularly high among Friendlies (78%). But despite most Americans’ desire to read the Bible more, two-thirds of them (67%) say their level of Bible-reading is about the same as it was one year ago.
If you've read the first piece in this series, titled Searching for hope – but not finding it? then you'll recognize how odd these finding are. People are searching for hope in the Bible. But they say they aren't finding hope. And yet, fewer people are even taking time to read the Bible. No wonder they aren't finding hope!
In this article, we'll look for a disconnect between the number of people who say they want to read the Bible more, and the number of people who are unable to do so. One of the big problems with self-reporting surveys is that people's assessment of themselves doesn't always match up with reality. So, we'll look at the conclusions respondents made about themselves, and then see if they match up with the raw data.
Categories of Bible readers
Barna defines the categories of Bible readers. The full criteria for being in each of the categories is in the "Searching for hope ..." article. For this particular analysis, we only need to know the following information.
Bible Engagement Definitions
| Segment | Definition | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Bible Engaged |
|
20% |
| Bible Friendly |
|
38% |
| Bible Neutral |
|
23% |
| Bible Skeptic |
|
19% |
| Bible Hostile |
|
13% |
Definitions for 2017 Barna State of the Bible survey
Few Bible Engaged Americans -
Right away, we see one issue. Only one in 5 Americans (20%) are in the Bible Engaged category. Further, the Bible Friendly category has such a wide definition that we cannot know how often they read the Bible. All we know for sure is that it's less than 4 times a week. The sad reality is that zero times a week is less than four. From this table, we just don't know.
The Bible Neutral category, at once a month or less, is really a non-starter as far as having much hope for reading the Bible more. While it's certainly easy to move up from 0 or 1 time per month, it's not likely to happen.
Bible Engagement Profile - any hope people will read the Bible more often?
Bible Engaged (20% of the population)
Believe the Bible is the actual word of God or inspired word of God. They engage with the Bible at least four times each week. More often than not, Bible Engaged adults are married females from the Baby Boomer generation, are 53 years of age on average, have not been to college, are weekly church attenders, attend Protestant churches, and reside in the South or Midwest. Three-quarters of Bible Engaged adults read the Bible every day. More African-Americans can be found in this category than the four other Bible engagement segments.
There actually is some hope, but also a sad reality that is apparent in this paragraph.
The good news is that they are Protestant and go to church every week. With apologies to Catholics, we'll see in a moment that Catholics are less likely to read the Bible. However, Catholics are more likely to read other liturgical documents. But this is all about searching for hope and therefore wanting to read the Bible more often. Therefore, the study, for better or worse, doesn't consider reading anything other than the Bible.
Discover more from God versus religion
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Hello,
I did not get the name of the author who wrote this? Very good. One thing I learned about reading the Holy Bible was not only reading it for understanding but also reading it to become, to change, to become more like Christ through his parables and examples, allowing Him to find a place to live in you. Exercising your faith through loyalty, diligence and keeping Gods commandments will enable you to achieve spiritual awareness, growth and guide you to qualify for eternal life.
Thank you for such sincere insight, I enjoyed it very much.
I leave this note for hope in our nation, hope in each other and that we may awaken from our spiritual slumber.
-Darcy Rossette
Hi Darcy – My name’s chris. Thanks for your reply. I totallt agree with what you said, and the need to pray for our nation, both as a country and as individuals in it.
I’m in the process of changing the theme and layout for the site, so some things are hard to find right now. If you want to know more about me, there’s About me – with an update at What’s next? – about me, March 2017 update. But even there, shortly after writing the update, I ended up in the hospital with a very serious infection and wrote God – is it time for me to go home?. That really focused me more than ever.
God bless you!