by Timothy Beal
Almost two-thirds of Americans can’t name at least five of the Ten Commandments. Some of these people, moreover, are outspoken promoters of them. Georgia representative Lynn Westmoreland, cosponsor of a bill to display the Ten Commandments in the chambers of the House of Representatives and Senate, could remember only three when Stephen Colbert asked him to recite them on The Colbert Report (Colbert, who I hear teaches Sunday school at his church, would probably have done considerably better).
Let me add another datum, albeit more or less anecdotal. Among the few hundred students I’ve taught in college-level introductions to biblical literature over the past couple of years, I estimate that more than half came to class on the first day with more ideas about the Bible derived from Dan Brown’s 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code than from actual biblical texts. In the old days, biblical studies professors talked about demythologizing the Bible in order to, for example, sort out the “Jesus of history” from the “Christ of faith.” Nowadays we might want to add demythologizing Da Vinci to the learning objectives.
There are, of course, exceptions to the generally very low levels of biblical literacy. In many churches, for example, there are core groups of people who know their Bibles inside and out. They read them daily, and many gather weekly in small groups in homes or neighborhood restaurants for Bible studies. For the most part, such meetings follow a format that has not changed much since the fundamentalist Bible-study-group movement of the nineteenth century: led by a minister or experienced lay teacher, they begin with a time to share joys and concerns, then prayer, then reading and in-depth discussion of a particular biblical passage, and then closing prayer (often followed by dessert!). Members of such groups will obviously have a greater level of biblical literacy. But we’re talking about a truly exceptional population—a remnant, to use a biblical metaphor that they might appreciate. Even among the majority of Christians who identify themselves strongly with the Bible, Bible reading is a rare activity. In a 2005 nationwide study of religious values, practices, and behaviors by Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, more than half of those identifying themselves as “Bible-believing” said they had not participated in any kind of Bible study or Sunday school program at all in the past month.
Biblical Consumerism
In response, many take George Gallup Jr.’s oft-quoted lament that America has become a nation of “biblical illiterates” as a rallying cry for a renewed commitment in churches and in the general public to education in biblical literature. I can sympathize. I even wrote a book about it. But I also think it’s important to ask why biblical literacy is so low.
One explanation is that biblical literacy is simply a subset of book literacy in general, which is clearly in decline. A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts indicates that, between 1992 and 2002, the number of adults who read at least one literary book in the course of a year had dropped by 14 percent. The number of adults who read a book of any kind also dropped, by 7 percent. Judging from data on younger readers, the future of bibliographic culture is not bright: among adults eighteen to twenty-four years old, the decline in literary reading was 55 percent greater than it was among the general adult population. The book is losing its preeminence as the dominant medium for reading and writing as newer digital media scoop more and more market share and leisure time. Insofar as the Bible is tied to the fate of book culture, we can expect biblical literacy rates to continue to drop.
The decline in overall book reading is part of the story. But other puzzling details call for further explanation. First, while biblical literacy is extremely low, popular reverence for the Bible is extremely high. Recall the polling data mentioned in the last chapter. About three-quarters of Americans believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and almost half of those say that it should be taken literally, word for word, as such. Roughly half of all Americans agree with the statement “the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings” (only 35 percent did in 1991). About two-thirds of Americans believe that the Bible “answers all or most of the basic questions of life”—and 28 percent of them admit that they rarely or never read it! There seems to be no correlation between reading the Bible and revering it. The Bible appears to be the most revered book never read.
Second, and even more puzzling, while biblical literacy is about as low as it can get, Bible sales have been booming. The biggest Bible publishers in this highly competitive business guard their sales data closely, but reliable industry sources estimate that 2007 saw about 25 million Bibles sold, generating revenues of about $770 million in the United States alone. That was an increase of more than 26 percent since 2005, which saw U.S. sales of about $609 million. In fact, the Bible-publishing business has been enjoying a healthy compounded growth rate of close to 10 percent per year for several years. Even during the high point of economic crisis in late 2008, when other book sales were hurting badly, Bible sales continued to boom, with an estimated $823.5 million that year. Indeed, Bible publishing tends to thrive during times of war and financial disaster. Although it’s too early to know for sure as I write, it may well turn out that the latest economic bust will be another boom time for the Bible business.
Bible publishing has come a long way since the Taylors began publishing their Living Bible out of their living room. This is no mom-and-pop Christian cottage industry. In fact, the two biggest and most ambitious Bible publishers are owned by larger non-Christian media conglomerates. Thomas Nelson, which publishes more than three hundred different Bibles and controls about 20 percent of the biblical market share in the United States, was purchased in 2006 by the private equity firm InterMedia Partners VII in a deal worth $473 million. Zondervan, which lists more than five hundred different Bibles in its online catalogue and controls about 35 percent of the biblical market, was purchased in 1988 by HarperCollins, which is part of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
That the two largest Bible publishers are now part of even larger media conglomerates does not imply religious commitments on the part of executives in the companies that bought them. Rupert Murdoch didn’t acquire Zondervan because he wanted to spread the Word any more than he acquired MySpace because he wanted to expand his friends list. As owner of HarperCollins, he also publishes occult classics like The Satanic Bible and The Necronomicon. Getting into Bible publishing is simply good business.
So biblical literacy is low to zip, even while biblical reverence remains high and Bible sales rise. What’s going on?
Could it be that biblical literacy is being replaced by biblical consumerism? In today’s consumer culture, we are what we buy, wear, and carry. We identify ourselves by our patterns of consumer choices, by the market niches we buy into. It’s gone beyond that post-Cartesian proof of existence, “I shop, therefore I am.” Today, it’s closer to “I shop for what I am.” The culture industry makes and markets identities. I want to be outdoorsy, so I buy a lot of Gore-Tex, some “Life is good” shirts, and a Yakima rack for my Subaru. High school and college students identify the cultures on different campuses by brands: this school is very Hollister; that one’s more American Apparel.
At the same time, we consumers are convinced that the shortest route to self-improvement is through new products. Products change lives, right? My big New Year’s resolution might be to become an organized person. So the first thing I do is go to the home store and buy a bunch of plastic boxes. Never mind the empty ones in my basement that I bought a year ago.
Or say I want to strengthen my identity as a Christian and grow deeper in my faith. I want a more God-centered life. I want to be “in the Word.” I feel like I should be reading the Bible a lot more than I do. After all, like most people, I believe that the Bible is God’s Word, that it’s totally correct in all of its teachings, and that it holds the answers to all of life’s most basic questions. So what do I do? Buy a Bible. Or, more likely, buy another Bible. A marketing executive at a major evangelical publishing company told me that, according to the
ir research, the average Christian household owns nine Bibles and purchases at least one new Bible every year.
Expectations of Biblical Proportions
But biblical consumerism only partially explains the negative correlation between (high) Bible sales and (low) Bible literacy. There must be more to it. After all, buying a Bible obviously doesn’t prevent a person from reading it. Just as I want to do more with that bike rack than drive around town with it, and just as I want to do more with those storage bins than leave them empty on my basement floor, so too a biblical consumer wants to do more with a Bible than buy it. What do these potential Bible readers want that they’re not getting? How is their desire to read the Bible frustrated so that they end up not reading it?
Nearly two decades of teaching the Bible in college classrooms and church Sunday school classes (all ages) have shown me that the most common source of frustration stems not from the Bible itself but from the expectations that come with it. The Bible does not deliver what readers have come to believe it’s supposed to deliver. The experience of reading biblical literature doesn’t sync with the common idea of the Bible as God’s textbook on what to believe and do.
Many of my college students begin the semester feeling as though they have been discouraged from reading the Bible. Most have given up trying, not because they’re uninterested in it, but because they worry that they’re not getting what they’re supposed to get from it. It feels like others—pastors, parents, “better” Christians, God—are reading over their shoulders, arms crossed, shaking their heads. “No, no, no. That’s not it.” The questions it raises for them don’t seem to be welcomed by the religious authorities they have encountered in churches, campus ministry programs, religious talk shows, and the news.
I realized how pervasive this feeling is among students during my first year as a college teacher. I was fresh out of graduate school and eager to begin teaching a freshman seminar course that I had just put together. It was called Howling in the Wilderness, which was meant to give a nod both to “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” in Isaiah and to poet Allen Ginsberg’s Beat manifesto, Howl. The idea was to explore biblical and biblically inspired prophetic writings, from Isaiah to Ginsberg and beyond.
The first assignment was to read several chapters of the prophet Isaiah. I was excited for our session, expecting students to be fired up about what they had read. I knew that most did not think of themselves as religious, and none of them had spent much time reading the Bible, let alone prophetic literature. I expected they would find it both strange and fascinating.
“Did everyone read the assignment?” I asked as they were settling into their seats around the seminar table. They all nodded. “Well, what did you think?” There was complete silence. Everyone looked down, flipping randomly through her or his Bible, carefully avoiding eye contact with me.
Finally, a friendly, ponytailed, Birkenstocked young man let out a heavy sigh and raised his hand. Relieved, I invited him to speak. “I couldn’t get anything at all from it,” he confessed. “All I could think about when I tried to read it was whether I was getting from it what other students were getting from it. I never read this stuff before and don’t know what it’s supposed to be about. What was I supposed to be seeing? Was I getting what you want me to get? I ended up getting nowhere.” Now everyone was making eye contact with me. “Did anyone else feel that way?” I asked. Nearly all of them nodded vigorously.
I was flabbergasted by this nearly unanimous confession of biblical paralysis. I had not expected students like these, who had little or no experience reading the Bible, to feel so intimidated by it, so worried about “getting it right.” Over the years since, I’ve learned that they are not the only ones. Most students don’t trust their own insights and questions when they are reading a biblical assignment. They expect that there must be a point, a right reading that they’re missing, and that they don’t have the authority to suggest any other interpretation.
By Whose Authority?
For many Christians, this experience of feeling flummoxed by the Bible can be even more disconcerting. It invokes not only frustration but also guilt for doubting the Bible’s integrity. They feel that others have the keys to it and speak for it—the preacher, who waxes so inspirationally about it from the pulpit every Sunday, and those pillar members of the church who’ve been reading it for decades and who regularly meet in Bible-study groups to explicate it in depth. “I feel such a mixture of desire and fear when I try to read the Bible,” someone recently told me after a class I’d taught at a local church. “I have a strong desire to get into it, explore it, begin to understand it. But there’s even more fear that I’ll . . . get it wrong.” A university professor with a Ph.D. in organizational behavior and a successful career in academic publishing, she’s not exactly the kind of person who typically shies away from reading something and telling you what she thinks about it. But the thought of reading the Bible for herself feels uniquely daunting.
It’s like the proverbial Sunday school class in which the teacher asks if anyone knows what is small, furry, has a long tail, and chatters from the trees. A girl raises her hand and says, “I know the answer is Jesus, but it sure sounds like a squirrel.” When people actually read biblical literature, honestly and closely, they discover a multitude of potential meanings. This makes them uneasy, because they believe that there is supposed to be one right reading for any biblical text. Like the girl in the children’s sermon, they may even know what they’re supposed to see. But they don’t see it. They begin to distrust themselves and what they do see, to assume that there must be something wrong with their thinking. Something dangerously unorthodox.
Even veteran Bible readers sometimes feel this way about the Bible. On one occasion I was talking about this book, then a work in progress, with an older woman who is a longtime lay leader in her Bible church. She reads the Bible several times a day and hosts weekly Bible studies in her home. She admitted that she often finds herself perplexed by ambiguities and seeming contradictions in the Bible. She wouldn’t bring them up in Bible-study group, because she worries that they could be a stumbling block to faith for some less-experienced members. At the same time, she expects other members, less comfortable with such ambiguities, would quickly dismiss them with standard resolutions, familiar from a century of biblical fundamentalism, that she considers too easy. “So when questions like that come up for me while I’m reading, I just step back and pray, well, Lord, I’ll just look forward to you explaining that one to me!” On the one hand, this response is one of faith that the Bible does not ultimately possess such ambiguities—that it’s a problem of human misperception, and must therefore be deferred to the afterlife, when she will no longer see things through a glass darkly. On the other hand, it expresses at least a little anxiety that what the Bible is supposed to be isn’t what it appears to be. The expectation is that the question is answerable, but there is at least a little worry, even in this woman who is the epitome of a Bible-believer, that it’s not.
Driving biblical consumerism is this disconnection between what potential Bible readers expect from the Bible and what they experience when they crack it open. It’s testimony to the power of the iconic idea of the Bible that so many readers believe that the problem must be with them—they just don’t get it—rather than with their expectations for Bible reading. Successful Bible publishers know that there is a huge market of people who believe in this idea of the Bible and want to experience it for themselves. They also know that most have been frustrated in previous attempts. Is the problem that potential readers just haven’t found the product that finally fulfills that desire, once and for all? Or is it that that desire cannot be fulfilled? Which would be better for the Bible business?
3
Biblical Values
A TWENTY-SOMETHING WOMAN sitting next to me on the plane thumbs distractedly through a fashion-and-lifestyle magazine. It’s called Becoming. On the cover is a Jennifer Aniston look-alike in d
esigner casuals, smiling confidently as she gives the camera one of those hair-care-commercial shoulder turns. Cover lines surround her in bright green and blue type on a purple background:
13 STORIES OF SURVIVAL
THE MUST-HAVE for Your Wardrobe
LOVE: WHAT IS IT? And How to Find It
As she flips back and forth, spending little more than a few seconds on any one page, I catch images of women in yoga-like poses, couples walking hand in hand on the beach, a bathroom scale. There are columns about how to lose weight, how to balance work and play, how to find and keep the right man. Standard Marie Claire or InStyle fare, perfect for killing time during the flight. But then I notice other, not-so-standard elements: boxed features and callouts and columns about “Bible Women” and “Bible Stuff to Know,” and longer articles with titles like “Matthew,” “Romans,” and “Revelation.”
What my row-mate is perusing is not just any magazine, or not exactly a magazine. It’s a Bible magazine—a “Biblezine,” one of a growing line of niche-marketed Bibles in magazine form published by Thomas Nelson. There are Biblezines for just about everyone. Becoming targets college-age and young professional women. Explore is for preteen boys, and Refuel is for teenage boys. Blossom is for preteen girls, and Revolve is for teenage girls. Magnify is for the Nickelodeon Channel generation. Align is for young professional men, and Redefine is for baby boomers.
The marketing genius behind Biblezines is Hayley Morgan (now Hayley DiMarco), whom Nelson hired away from that ultimate branding machine, Nike, in 1998 to be its young-adult brand manager. Using market research techniques that she learned at Nike, she was able to develop the Biblezine and Extreme Teen brands from nothing to $10 million in four years, at which point she left Nelson to develop her own brand of Christian content for teen girls. Since her departure, Biblezines have continued to do very well for Nelson.