An open Bible is reflected in a table. (Photo by Aaron Burden/Unsplash/Creative Commons)(RNS) — One of the biggest research projects into Scripture ever conducted is looking into how people use the Bible and what it means to them, an attempt to understand why, in a time when 90% of the world’s population has access to the Christian sacred text, relatively few consider it a foundation of their lives.
The study, with more than 90,000 interviews conducted so far, was commissioned three years ago by an international group of Bible societies, which publish Christian Scripture and promote it, in hopes of encouraging people in historically Christian regions of the globe to rediscover it as a source of wisdom and universal truths.
“Bible societies are heavily invested in translating the Bible into many different languages,” said Richard Powney, one of the senior researchers on the project. “But that is not the final frontier. We want to understand more about how people engage with it in different parts of the world. If there are cultural gaps opening up between people and the Bible we want to unpick that and work out why.”
Bible Society leaders from the West met in Geneva last month to discuss the early research findings in Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand; others from central and eastern Europe, including Russia, met last week in Bucharest, and those from Latin America will soon meet in Mexico.
The first stage of the research divided the world into geographical regions, with the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in one cluster, based on their social, economic and demographic connections as well as their common Christian heritage.
Bible Society logo. (Courtesy image)
Another cluster consists of central and eastern Europe, while there are separate ones for the Middle East, Latin America, Muslim-majority areas of Africa, other parts of Africa and Asia.
The research is being carried out on behalf of an umbrella organization called United Bible Fellowship by the British and Foreign Bible Society, which conducted its own research in 2018 into engagement with the Bible in England and Wales, where 63% of residents have never read the Bible at all.
That study drew a complex picture of religion among young people particularly in an increasingly secular country. Some …
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The study, with more than 90,000 interviews conducted so far, was commissioned three years ago by an international group of Bible societies, which publish Christian Scripture and promote it, in hopes of encouraging people in historically Christian regions of the globe to rediscover it as a source of wisdom and universal truths.
“Bible societies are heavily invested in translating the Bible into many different languages,” said Richard Powney, one of the senior researchers on the project. “But that is not the final frontier. We want to understand more about how people engage with it in different parts of the world. If there are cultural gaps opening up between people and the Bible we want to unpick that and work out why.”
Bible Society leaders from the West met in Geneva last month to discuss the early research findings in Europe, the United States, Australia and New Zealand; others from central and eastern Europe, including Russia, met last week in Bucharest, and those from Latin America will soon meet in Mexico.
The first stage of the research divided the world into geographical regions, with the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in one cluster, based on their social, economic and demographic connections as well as their common Christian heritage.
Bible Society logo. (Courtesy image)
Another cluster consists of central and eastern Europe, while there are separate ones for the Middle East, Latin America, Muslim-majority areas of Africa, other parts of Africa and Asia.
The research is being carried out on behalf of an umbrella organization called United Bible Fellowship by the British and Foreign Bible Society, which conducted its own research in 2018 into engagement with the Bible in England and Wales, where 63% of residents have never read the Bible at all.
That study drew a complex picture of religion among young people particularly in an increasingly secular country. Some …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]