Fewer American Adults Are Engaging the Bible

In a time when 90% of the world’s population has access to the Christian sacred text of the Bible, a declining number of adults consider it a foundation of their lives. “Today, just 1 in 10 Gen Z adults regularly engages with the Bible,” says John Farquhar Plake, chief ministry insights officer of the American Bible Society.

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Alistair Begg, author and senior pastor of Cleveland’s Parkside Church, laments the diminishing role of Scripture in congregational life, warning that modern churchgoers often arrive not with a sense of reverence but with a consumerist mindset and calls for a return to “serious engagement with the Bible.” He says, “I’m not sure that America understands just how deep the problem is, in relationship to biblical illiteracy. You cannot continue to make your journey through life without your Bible—not as a talisman, not as something just to be revered in a corner—but without the Bible as our daily source of knowledge and encounter with God.”

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America’s preteens are not being raised in an environment that honors the Bible or presents its message, according to George Barna, director of research at the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University. The lack of such spiritual formation means “we are on the precipice of Christian invisibility,” he says. His research shows just 21% of preteens believe in the existence of “absolute moral truths” that “are unchanging and knowable.” Only one in four agree the Bible is the true word of God.

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“Biblical worldview incidence has declined with each of the last five generations. During that time, the national incidence of adults holding a biblical worldview has plummeted from 12% to today’s 4% level.”

“Our studies of teenagers and preteens indicate that the national incidence will drop another two points within the next 15 years, unless some dramatic and unusually effective spiritual renewal event occurs,” Barna continues. “The expected decline can be explained by the increasing influence of the worldview championed by Millennials and Gen Z as the proportion of adults from the Boomer and Elders generations substantially decreases.”

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In exploring four dozen worldview measures, Barna says traditional morality is one of the major casualties of the Millennials and Gen Zs replacing Boomers and Elders as the largest generations in the adult population. Millennials are currently ages 22 to 40; Boomers are 60 to 78; Elders are 79 or older. Gen Z is comprised of people ages 3 through 21, but as a survey of adults, only those 18 to 21 years of age are included in the data.

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Data from the American Worldview Inventory 2024 show a dramatic shift in morals.

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Barna explains that a biblical worldview consists of 7 cornerstones:

  1. An orthodox, biblical understanding of God.
  2. All human beings are sinful by nature; every choice we make has moral considerations and consequences.
  3. The consequences of our sin can only be forgiven and eliminated through Jesus Christ. That forgiveness is available only by our personal, sincere acknowledgment and confession of our sins and complete reliance on His grace for the forgiveness of those sins.
  4. The entire Bible is true, reliable and relevant, making it the best moral guide for every person, in all situations.
  5. Absolute moral truth exists—and those truths are defined by God, described in the Bible, and are unchanging across time and cultures.
  6. The ultimate purpose of human life is to know, love, and serve God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul.
  7. Success on Earth is best understood as consistent obedience to God—in thoughts, words, and actions.

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