An interesting, and somewhat surprising story appeared in the Church Times this week regarding the extent to which people believe the Bible to be relevant today.
The survey, of more than 90,000 adults aged 15 and older in 85 countries, conducted by the Patmos World Bible Attitudes Survey and commissioned by the Bible Society, found that 42% of Christian respondents reported using the Bible weekly and 55% said they were confident that they could describe the overall story of the Bible. Surprisingly 17% of non-religious respondents thought that the Bible was personally relevant to them, and 70% of all respondents agreed that it was good for children to know Bible stories.
Survey data was segmented by region and history. Of the 85 countries involved, 24 were more “economically developed, historically Christian” countries in Europe, North America, and Australasia. Here, 41% said they definitely believed in a god or higher power, a figure that rose to 62% when the word “probably” was added. 47% said the Bible has something meaningful to say about life today, and 36% regarded the Bible as relevant to them personally.
The report listed “two significant challenges… First, the indifference towards the Bible and religion in more secular contexts. Second, there are still significant parts of the world where people have not heard about the Bible.”
On the face of it and from a western viewpoint, most of these percentages are higher than I would have expected, giving a fairly optimistic view of the value of scripture. I also note that Spain is listed as one of 5 countries with a higher church attendance and weekly use of the Bible, the others being the United States, Italy, New Zealand, Canada. Do we believe this to be true? Does it resonate with our experience? Unfortunately the article did not give any indication as to how the participants were selected and how the sample might have been structured, so do not have the complete picture.
You can find the Church Times story here.
To access the full report, click to visit Patmos’ home page here. But NB full access to the report requires that you register with Patmos.