Biblical Illiteracy Tops Epic Proportions

What if God wrote a book, and no one bothered to read it?
Dr. Woodrow Kroll, President Back to the Bible International

After analyzing more than 10,000 personal interviews, researcher George Barna discovered that three-fifths of Americans say they believe the Bible is totally accurate in all that it teaches. Still, most Americans appear to know little of what s in the Bible and as a result the Bible appears to have little impact on their lives. God wrote a book, but few bother to read it.

Homeschools Moving to Separation of Church and State?

Why Christian Education is so Necessary in Today s Homes

More and more, we at Bridgeway Homeschool Academy are hearing homeschooling parents state that they no longer want Biblical teaching in their curriculum.

Citing such reasons as, They get enough at church, We don t want them to be turned off by it, or It gets in the way of the academics, homeschooling parents are turning their backs on Christian education.

Bridgeway has the solution.

I don t believe Bible illiteracy is a problem in the church; I believe it is the problem in the church. Failure to read God s Word is impacting our view of the world around us. This year saw increases in the proportions of people who believe that cohabitation (60%), adultery (42%), sexual relations between homosexuals (30%), abortion (45%), pornography (38%), the use of profanity (36%) and gambling (61%) are morally acceptable behaviors.

George Gallup Jr. is right: Biblical illiteracy presents not only a spiritual or religious problem in this nation, but a cultural one as well. We cannot inhibit the great American slide into a moral vacuum until we seriously addresses the problem of Bible illiteracy both in the world and in the church.

How Bad is the Problem of Bible Illiteracy?

A few years ago the Gallup Organization devised The Gallup Biblical Knowledge Quiz to test the Bible knowledge of the American public. When asked: What is first book of Bible ? 49% answered correctly. When asked: Can you name one of the prophets in the Old Testament ? 21% could. And 35% of the American population could name the four Gospels. This means, of course, that 51% could not name the first book of the Bible, 79% could not name a single prophet of the Old Testament, and 65% of Americans could not name Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

But that s the general population. Surely Bible illiteracy isn t a problem for the Christians in America. There is little discernable difference between the knowledge of God s Word in the Born Again community and the American population at large.

Wheaton College is one of America s bastions of evangelical education. Still, when Wheaton professor Dr. Gary Burge tested the Bible knowledge of incoming Freshmen, alarmingly he discovered: one-third of freshmen could not sequence in order Abraham, the OT prophets, the death of Christ, and Pentecost. Half could not sequence Moses in Egypt, Isaac s birth, Saul s death, Judah s exile. One third could not find Paul s travels in Acts. And one-half didn t know the Christmas story was in Matthew.

This does not reflect poorly on Wheaton these are freshmen. They haven t yet had a class at Wheaton, but they have had plenty of Bible lessons in church, home, Christian schools, etc.

I had similar results years ago when I was chairman of the Religion Department at Liberty University. Unbelievably few incoming freshmen could pass a basic Bible comprehensive exam. Again, they had never had a class at Liberty, but they had every advantage of church, school and home. Something is missing in the way Christians are getting to know God and His Word.

Christians Have The Money; They Lack The Will

The problem of Bible illiteracy is apparently of low priority in Christian circles. The Barna Group estimated from a last poll of Christian spending that Christian ministries raised nearly $60 billion for domestic ministry in a recent year and there is an estimated $3 billion of new construction work occurring on church properties to facilitate expanded ministry activities. All of these figures lend an air of security and stability to the religious condition of the country, says Barna.

But while the church in America tears down its barns and builds bigger barns, the people in the pews become less biblically informed in each generation. Bible illiteracy has reached crisis proportion in America.

Even missions-minded Christians often fail to see the importance of Bible-teaching in their missionary goals and expenditures. Renowned British missiologist and author of the popular book Operation World, Patrick Johnstone lamented, Christian donors need to be guided by the Lord rather than by their emotional response to physical suffering. The famine of the Word of God is still a more serious problem than that of food in Africa today. (Operation World, 21st Century Edition (Carlisle, England: Paternoster, 2001, p. 702)

If we truly believe that an informed public will become an active public, we should also believe that a biblically-informed Christian will become a biblically-active Christian. Action without understanding is like heat without light. Inaction because of a lack of understanding is the absence of both heat and light. But biblical understanding that leads to biblical action is the ideal combination of heat and light. Who will address the crisis of Bible illiteracy in America?

The Conclusion of the Whole Matter

Pollster George Gallup Jr. once remarked, Americans revere the Bible but, by and large, they don t read it. And because they don t read it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates. If serious patrons of the Word of God don t address this need, who will? If we don t address it now, when?

Dr. Woodrow Kroll, President Back to the Bible International

If Christians blew the dust off their Bibles at the same time, we d all be killed in the dust storm. — Woodrow Kroll