Are We More Biblically Illiterate than Ever?

For most Christians with any knowledge of the people who live and work in their community, the answer to the question “Are we more biblically illiterate than ever?” seems obvious: of course we are. You may not know that statistical evidence backs up your anecdotal belief. Surveys are helpful in potentially increasing our already firm conviction and providing a deeper understanding of growing societal unbelief. That is precisely the aim of this brief article, which will examine a few more extensive surveys that chart and track biblical literacy over time for both the US populace and professing evangelicals as a demographic.

One thing to note about our titular question is that everyone has a different definition of biblical literacy. Is it reading the Bible a few times a year? Is it knowing Bible facts? Is it knowing how someone can be saved by grace through faith in Christ? Is it professing the fundamental doctrinal truths Christians have professed for hundreds of years? Even polling organizations don’t have a single definition. To summarize some of the statistical data, we’ll define biblical literacy in two ways: biblical knowledge and theological accuracy.

Biblical Literacy as Biblical Knowledge

In 2024, the American Bible Society partnered with the Barna Group to conduct the “State of the Bible: USA 2024” survey. An interesting aspect of this survey is that they tracked results over three groupings of people: Scripture Engaged, Movable Middle, and Bible Disengaged. They observed that this Movable Middle “lost four percentage points in the last year. This represents more than 10 million people who dropped into the lowest category, the Bible Disengaged.” In other words, when it comes to just reading the Bible, Americans are reading the Bible less.

When we turn from examining the frequency of reading the Bible to a basic knowledge of the content found in the Bible, we find that evangelicals do not fare well. In 2019, the Pew Research Center published survey results titled “What Americans Know About Religion.” When examining evangelical knowledge of the Bible, they found:

• Only 66 percent of evangelicals knew that Jesus was from Nazareth, while 86 percent knew that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt.
• Only 69 percent of evangelicals knew that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount, while 91 percent knew that David killed Goliath with a stone.
• 25 percent of evangelicals thought the Golden Rule was one of the Ten Commandments.

These results are interesting for two reasons. First, many evangelicals lack a basic factual knowledge of the Bible. Second, they know less about the New Testament than the Old Testament, which is deeply concerning. The New Testament serves as a hermeneutical grid for understanding the Old Testament. While a factual knowledge of the Old Testament is good, without a thorough understanding of the New Testament, a person’s theology can quickly trend toward moralizing Old Testament narratives.

Biblical Literacy as Theological Accuracy

If we move beyond defining biblical literacy as reading the Bible and knowing answers to basic factual questions and turn instead to defining biblical literacy as an understanding of and belief in the doctrine contained in the Bible, we find similar discouraging statistics. Since 2014, Ligonier Ministries has conducted its “State of Theology Survey.” It is by far the most robust longitudinal study of Christian beliefs among Americans and evangelicals.

In 2022, Ligonier found that US adults increasingly view the Bible as not literally true. When asked whether they agreed or disagreed with this statement, “The Bible, like all sacred writings, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths but is not literally true,” 53 percent of American respondents agreed. Since 2014, this marks a 12 percent increase in the number of adults who do not believe in the veracity of the Bible. The study emphasized this finding: “This is the clearest and most consistent trend revealed by the State of Theology survey since it began in 2014.” When this same question was asked of US evangelicals, the 2022 survey results reported that 26 percent agreed that the Bible was closer to being a helpful account of ancient myths than true history (a 9 percent increase since 2016).

Ligonier found other concerning trends as well. When asked to agree or disagree with this statement, “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam,” 56 percent of evangelicals agreed, up from 48 percent in 2016. Also, from 2020 to 2022, there was a 13 percent increase in the number of evangelicals who agreed with the statement “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.”

The Pew Research Center survey cited earlier confirms Ligonier’s findings. Pew found that only one in five Americans know that Protestantism (not Catholicism) traditionally teaches that salvation comes through faith alone. This survey and others mentioned consistently find the same thing: not only are Americans (and professed evangelicals) reading their Bibles less, but they are also losing a comprehensive understanding of the Christian faith taught in the Bible. This is doubly concerning.

So, how will we answer the question “Are we more biblically illiterate than ever?” Both anecdotally and statistically, the answer is yes—profoundly and discouragingly yes. But there was one bright spot in the statistics. The Pew study found that church attendance significantly increased biblical knowledge. One way to fight biblical illiteracy is to attend a faithful church and invite others to attend with you. And we pray for Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest (Matt. 9:38) who will teach others to observe all that Christ has commanded (Matt. 28:20).