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Survey: United States has highest interest in the Bible

In preparation for the next gathering of the Catholic bishops around the world, the Catholic Biblical Federation has conducted an extensive survey regarding how the Bible is read in 13 different countries. The survey reports that the U.S. is the one of most Bible-believing nations and the one that is most interested in the Scriptures, reports Catholic News Agency.

The survey was held to obtain a sense of the influence of the Scriptures to assist the bishops in their October 5-26, 2008 synod on “The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church”.

Thus far, 13,000 interviews have been held in the United States, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Russia. According to Vatican analyst Sandro Magister, the results released on April 28 “cover the entirety of the adult population” and the results pertaining solely to Catholics will be published at a later date. Results from Argentina, South Africa, the Philippines, and Australia are still being collated.

In Magister’s view, the results of the survey show that, “the Bible is not present and influential in all countries in the same way. The wave of secularization produces very different effects from region to region. In the United States and in Italy, these effects appear to be more contained than in other countries of Western Europe, among which France emerges as the most de-Christianized nation.”

The Bible is present in many houses in Italy and the U.S., 75% and 93% respectively, but in France less than half of the people have a Bible at home.

However, the only place where the Scriptures have been read in the last year is the United States, which comes in at 75%. Despite high ownership, Italian Bible reading is reported at 27 %, and in Spain the number falls to 20 %.

One result that confirms the need for an initiative that Pope Benedict XVI has been promoting is the feedback on the number of people who pray with the Bible or Lectio Divina, as it is referred to in Church tradition. The numbers are highest in the U.S. (37%) and Poland (32%) but Italy falls to 10 % and Spain to 8%.

Belief in the veracity of the Scriptures was found to be highest in Poland, Russia and the United States (93, 90 and 88 percents respectively).

Bible literacy was found to be high amongst Americans too. Magister reports that “more than a third of the adult population responded correctly that the Gospels are part of the Bible, that Jesus did not write any books, that Moses is a character in the Old Testament, and that Paul and Peter are not the authors of Gospels.”

Interestingly, 27% of Americans adhere to a fundamentalist or literalist interpretation of the Scriptures, but these fundamentalists also show a poorer understanding of the Bible than those who interpret it with a more critical spirit.

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[05/03/2008]

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