According to a new survey conducted by Gloo and the Barna Group, Americans are reading their Bibles more. As a recent article in The Christian Post summarized, “[A]pproximately 50% of self-identified Christians report reading the Bible weekly, the highest level of Bible reading among Christians in more than a decade.” The trend is especially pronounced among millennial and Gen Z men and represents a 12% rebound from its lowest point in 2024.

That’s good news. However, according to the same study, only 36% of Americans believe that the Bible is “100% accurate,” a number significantly down from 43% in 2000. In fact, “[J]ust 44% of self-identified Christians strongly affirmed the accuracy of the Bible.” That’s not good news.

On a radio broadcast in 1952, the eminent theologian Carl F. H. Henry commented on a then-recent poll that found 99% of Americans believed in God. With justified cynicism, he said:

The vast majority of Americans today may believe in a ghost god, in a phantom god, in a god who makes very little difference in the great decisions of life and even less in the cares of everyday existence.

His concern proved correct. Years later, in their book Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Christian Smith and Melinda Denton described the dominant worldview of American young people as “moralistic therapeutic deism.” In other words, even those who claimed to believe in God believed in a caricature instead, a god who existed on their terms and was involved in their lives primarily to make them happy. If people today are reading the Bible more than they have in years, but believe less in its authority, Henry’s claim about America’s fickle religiosity still applies.

It is a tendency of fallen humans to create God in our own image. This tendency is the root of idolatry. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul, we want the blessing of reading the Bible without its authority.

After the Exodus, only weeks after God inflicted the plagues on Egypt and miraculously opened the Red Sea, the Israelites asked Aaron to make for them gods. Producing a golden calf, they proclaimed, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” Aaron then announced, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord.” Rather than bow before God as He had revealed Himself to them, they chose to apply to God what was unworthy of Him. It did not end well.

A few generations later, facing an invasion by the Philistines, the corrupt sons of the High Priest Eli took the Ark of the Covenant to the battlefield. God, however, was not a tool to be used or controlled. Instead, they lost the battle, the Ark, and their lives.

Those who use the Bible for their own ends rather than submit to its authority are like the theologians in the nineteenth century who used the Word to justify slavery. Or those who claim that the Bible backs the murder of the unborn through abortion. God’s word is not our plaything, neither personally nor culturally. God will not be mocked, nor will He be controlled.

Still, because the Bible carries the authority of God, increased engagement with it is still good news. Throughout history, the great works of God in revivals and reformations nearly always began with a renewed love and study of the Bible. To reverse the image from C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, the new Bible readers who are calling on God may be surprised when He shows up. They may wish to keep Him at arm’s length, but His Word does not return void. It won’t this time, either.

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