The following article was published by the Washington Examiner and written by Katelynn Richardson [Opinion].
“By renouncing the Bible, philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral Subjects,” Benjamin Rush wrote to John Adams in 1807. “It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published.”
Many Americans, considering the data from a recent Gallup poll, would find Rush’s suggestion absurd today. A record high of 29% believe the Bible is a collection of "fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man.” That’s compared to 26% in 2017 and 17% in 2011.
Just 20% now say it is the actual word of God, while 49% say it is inspired by God but not to be taken literally. The number of those who say it is the actual word of God rises, though only to 40%, among those who self-identify as evangelical or born-again. These numbers are notable: Despite increasing mistrust in its veracity, most continue to hold the Bible in high regard, believing it in some sense to be given by God.
Many still don’t know what it actually says, with different surveys finding half of U.S. adults unable to name the four gospels and 60% unable to remember half the Ten Commandments. Last year’s Barna Research Group survey similarly found that only 6% of Americans have a biblical worldview. In May, the American Worldview Inventory survey conducted by Arizona Christian University’s Cultural Research Center found just 37% of pastors hold such a view.
These findings track with other Gallup polls from this year showing the lowest recorded belief in God, though 81% still believe, and declining church attendance, with 29% saying they attended in the last seven days. The pollsters note that the Bible’s loosening grip on the American conscience means appeals to it for policy positions, such as on abortion and gender-related issues, will have less of an impact.
“Gallup's data show that the use of a literal interpretation of the Bible as the basis or justification for social policy positions will likely resonate only with a declining minority of the overall U.S. population,” they conclude.
As biblical literacy has declined along with trust in the Bible, it’s a fair assessment. Biblical arguments are less likely to be understood or appreciated by audiences in a secular age. So are our culture’s greatest achievements. The Bible echoes through everything from the law to the phrases we use in daily speech. It’s in the great English literature of Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens. It has influenced our history through our founding documents, the arguments of slavery abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, and the rhetoric of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr.
Controversial Canadian professor Jordan Peterson recently came to this conclusion, noting on Joe Rogan’s podcast how much of Western civilization has been founded on the Bible.
“It isn’t that the Bible is true," he said. "It’s that the Bible is the precondition for the manifestation of truth, which makes it way more true than just true. It’s a whole different kind of true. I think this is not only literally the case, factually. I think it can’t be any other way. It’s the only way we can solve the problem of perception.”
The decline of the Bible's popular resonance has manifested in cultural chaos. It doesn’t take much looking around to see our country is starving for a source of absolute meaning. Embracing a view of externally revealed truth would soothe our self-centered culture’s anxious search for identity and, as it has been for previous generations facing times of crisis, become a chief source of comfort.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt said on the 400th anniversary of the first printed English Bible that “one cannot study the story of the rise and development of the men and women who have been and continue to be the pathfinders and benefactors of our people and not recognize the outstanding place the Bible has occupied as the guide and inspiration of their thought and practice.”
There’s simply no book like it.
Despite its influence on political discourse, the Bible is most importantly a book that tells of God’s involvement and salvific intervention in the history of mankind. One, as it says of itself, that is not a bundle of “cleverly devised myths” but of eyewitness accounts. As Rush continued in his letter to Adams, “All Systems of Religion, morals, and Government not founded upon it, must perish, and how consoling the thot! — it will not only survive the wreck of those Systems, but the World itself.”
Let this be an encouragement to pick up your Bible and read.
