Why Johnny Can't Read the Bible

Most Americans—including Scripture-loving evangelicals—cannot name the disciples, the Ten Commandments, or the first book of the Bible. But that's not our biggest biblical illiteracy problem.
Collin Hansen
5/24/2010

Americans love their Bibles. So much so that they keep them in pristine, unopened condition. Or, as George Gallup Jr. and Jim Castelli said in a widely quoted survey finding, "Americans revere the Bible but, by and large, they don't read it."

Anecdotes abound. Time magazine observed in a 2007 cover story that only half of U.S. adults could name one of the four Gospels. Fewer than half could identify Genesis as the Bible's first book. Jay Leno and Stephen Colbert have made sport of Americans' inability to name the Ten Commandments—even among members of Congress who have pushed to have them posted publicly. the rest