America’s Bible Problem
Last year, Mark Noll published America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794–1911, in which the renowned historian showed how America relied on the Bible in rejecting the assumptions of European Christendom in favor of forming a constitutional republic that favored separation of church and state and individual rights. America, at its start and for most of its existence, has looked to the Bible as the highest authority on matters of ethics, religious practice, and politics. America’s Book was a sequel to Noll’s earlier work, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783. Noll’s work leads to one massive conclusion: If you really want to understand how America functioned for most of its history, you must seek to understand how Americans read and interpreted their Bibles.
I don’t know if Noll intends to follow up his latest offering with a third that brings us from 1911 to the modern day, but if he did, I imagine he would find evidence of continued decline. Surveys suggest that American Bible reading has been waning year-by-year. In 2022, the American Bible Society’s annual State of the Bible report found that only 39% of Americans reported reading the Bible multiple times per year. It was the first year that number had ever dropped below 50%.
While Bible reading declines, reverence for the Bible remains strong. I don’t have data to back this up, but anecdotally, signs of Bible reverence are all around. Athletes write verse references on their wristbands. My local YMCA has Bible verses on the wall alongside other quotes from history. It seems that rarely a day goes by that I don’t encounter someone with Bible references tattooed on their skin. Americans respect the Bible, but I don’t believe they necessarily understand it. It’s one thing to pick a slogan out of the Good Book to have it permanently inked on your forearm. It’s quite another to actually do the work of understanding it’s meaning and then living out its implications.
Reverence devoid of understanding is a dangerous combination. What good does it do to respect something you misunderstand? I would argue that it instead does quite a bit of harm. When the Bible is reverenced but not understood, it gets used to sanction beliefs and practices it does not teach. In our culture that so celebrates expressive individualism, we’ve managed to make the Bible a book about us. We’ve turned the story about God’s kingdom in Christ into a story about individual Americans discovering their best lives now. Evidence of this pervades our culture.
For illustrative purposes, let me provide two recent examples. The other night I was watching an MLB game on TV in which the commentators interviewed the starting pitcher after he had been removed from the game. He had given up some early runs, and they wanted to know how he kept his composure and shut out the other team for the remainder of the game. He responded that he had been reading his Bible earlier that day. Particularly, he had been reading about faith in the book of Hebrews. What lesson did he draw from the call in Hebrews to live by faith in the promises of God?
He concluded that he needed to have faith in his “stuff.” In baseball, “stuff” refers to how good a pitch is when it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. When a pitcher throws his curveball, he needs to trust that his curveball is good enough to do the job. It has the “stuff” necessary without him needing to overdo it. Hebrews, written to suffering Christians to encourage them to persevere in believing the promises of Christ in the face of persecution, is now about a millionaire professional athlete trusting his “stuff.” Should we celebrate reverence devoid of understanding if it means we’re not reverencing what the Bible is really about—Christ?
The other week, I received a letter from a reader who was disappointed that I had critiqued Donald Trump. He attached an article for me to read entitled, “Trump’s Secret Sauce.” What is Trump’s secret sauce? According to the article, Trump grew up attending Norman Vincent Peale’s church in New York. In case you haven’t heard of Peale, he’s one of the founders of the concept of the power of positive thinking. The article states, “One of his rules is to keep in mind the line from Romans 8:31: ‘If God is for us, who can be against us?’ Another rule is to memorize and regularly recall the famous verse, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’ from Philippians 4:13.”
Norman Vincent Peale did not preach the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ; he preached a false gospel of self-empowerment. He didn’t submit to the Bible; he erroneously used passages from the Bible to promote his fabricated message. The verses quoted in the article are from letters written by the apostle Paul to suffering Christians encouraging them to press on in the faith. Jesus didn’t come to empower humans toward greater trust in themselves. He came to save powerless humans from sin and death through trust in him. Donald Trump can peddle “God Bless the USA” Bibles to raise money for his mounting legal debts, but sold Bibles will never equate to understood Bibles. Anyone who claims they’ve never asked God for forgiveness proves they don’t understand a word of what they’re peddling.
It’s great to reverence the Bible, but let’s make sure we understand it, too. Otherwise, we’re not worshiping God; we’re bowing before an idol.
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