letter from America
A recent survey conducted by the American Bible Society has some heartening, as well as illuminating, insights.
According to ‘The State of the Bible: 2024’, across all generations bar one, the ‘transformative’ impact of the Bible on individuals’ lives has increased since 2023.
It has increased the most among ‘boomers’ (those born between 1946 and 1964), growing from 64% who report the Bible having a transformational impact on their lives to 69% in 2024.
But fascinatingly, a similar increase is reported among the much younger generation known as Gen Z – those who were born between 1997 and 2011. The surveys show that this youngest generation of Americans to be codified, reports an increase of transformational impact from the Bible from 50% to 54% in 2024.
Meanwhile, of those in Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1981), 58% of people this year say that ’the message of the Bible has transformed my life.’ This is up slightly from last year (57%), and is exactly the same as the overall average percentage reporting ‘life transformation’ from the message of the Bible across all generations (58% in 2024; 57% in 2023).
While one swallow does not make a summer, it is a set of data worth pondering. Especially when one notes that, by comparison, the much (and often unfairly) maligned ‘millennials’ (Gen Y), born between 1981 and 1996, are reporting a comparative decrease. The only generation so to report.
What is going on? Could it be that the younger generation coming up, Gen Z, are beginning to react against destructive agenda of neo-atheist immoralism (as a whole – not picking on any individual in particular) by moving in the other direction.
At any rate, time will tell. And in the meantime, what all these surveys show (flawed and inadequate as all surveys can be when not taken in accord with broader more confirmatory experience and data) is the ongoing importance of Bible teaching.
The church of Philadelphia, in Revelation 3, receives unmixed commendation from the Lord Jesus. Why? ‘Because you have kept my word about patient endurance’ (Rev. 3:10).
Learn this well, churches across the land and around the world. If you wish to survive the storm, don’t give into the latest fad (moral or cultural) but stick to the word of God. And be heartened by the evidence that is showing that actually that is what will reach even the younger generations.
