Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis studied the Bible’s place in the everyday lives of Americans to find out how, where, when and why ordinary Americans use the Bible.
The result was the 44-page “The Bible in American Life” report, which noted the four-centuries-old King James Version of the Bible is far from dead. Despite its archaic language and a market flooded with newer, more modern English translations, more than half of the individuals and two-fifths of the congregations surveyed still prefer the King James Bible.
African Americans reported the highest levels of Bible engagement:
• Seventy percent of all blacks said they read the Bible outside of public worship services, compared to 44 percent for whites, 46 percent for Hispanics and 28 percent for all other races.
• Bible memorization is highest among black respondents, 69 percent, compared to 51 percent among white conservative Protestants and 31 percent among white moderate/liberal Protestants.
Roughly half of Americans have read religious scripture outside of a public worship service in the past year. For 95 percent of those, the Bible is the scripture they read.
What did the study reveal about Bible readers?
• Most of those people read at least monthly, and a substantial number — 9 percent of all Americans — read every day.
• Women were more likely to read than men; older people were more likely to read than younger; Southerners were more likely to read than those of any other region.
• The percentage of verse memorizers among Bible readers (48 percent) equates to roughly a fourth of the American population as a whole, or nearly 80 million people.
• Psalm 23 — which begins “The Lord is my shepherd” — was the most popular Biblical passage.
• Younger people, those with higher salaries and, most dramatically, those with more education among the respondents read the Bible on the Internet or an e-device at higher rates.
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