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2010-09-01 issue:

Why do so many not know the Bible?

News Analysis

by John Longhurst for Mennonite Publishing Network

Print Article

Every year since 1995, Wheaton College—one of America's preeminent evangelical schools—has tested the Bible knowledge of incoming freshmen students. These students are among the best and brightest of Christian youth in the United States. Most come from strong churches and have a long history of involvements in Sunday schools, youth groups, camps and mission trips. They are students "who are the most intentional about cultivating their faith," says Wheaton New Testament professor Gary Burge.

Despite this, many do poorly on the Bible test. They can't put Bible events in order—they don't know that Abraham came before the Old Testament prophets, that the prophets preceded the death of Christ or that Christ died  before Pentecost. 

They find it hard to identify biblical characters such as the apostles or name the thief released by Pontius Pilate. They struggle to locate stories such as Paul's missionary travels in the book of Acts or the Passover story in Exodus.

"We tend to assume that because they come from strong churches, they know the details of the biblical story," says Burge. "But students tell me after they take the test that they didn’t have a clue."

Wheaton isn't the only school where students lack basic Bible knowledge; something similar is happening at Hesston (Kan.) College.

At Hesston, all students who want to graduate from the college have to take a biblical knowledge test as part of a biblical literature course. As at Wheaton, the test shows that many are unfamiliar with the Bible; it is common for most students to get 10 or fewer correct answers out of 50 questions.

“They know some individual Bible stories, but the majority don’t know how the whole story fits together,” says Michele Hershberger, who teaches in Hesston’s Bible and ministry department.


Their lack of Bible knowledge is "pretty startling," says Marion Bontrager, who also teaches Bible at Hesston.

"Many are unable to sequence major characters or events, and they have no sense of how things are connected," he adds.

Dan Epp-Tiessen, who teaches Bible at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg, Manitoba, finds that things aren’t much different in Canada.

'Biblical literacy is pretty low," he says of the students he teaches. "They don't know the story."

He notes that students who attended Christian high schools know more than others, but their understanding is still only "vague."

How did we get into this situation? Burge believes most of the blame can be laid directly at the feet of local  congregations.

"The problem starts at the church level," he says. "Bible instruction today is episodic, looking at a few favorite passages out of context. ... Most teaching is based on felt needs. They never get the story line from front to back."

Bontrager agrees. "There's a disjointed approach to learning about the Bible," he says. "They are taught a bunch of individual stories without seeing how they connect to each other.'

Karen Jones, author of Transforming Student Ministry: Research Calling for Change, echoes those sentiments.

"There are key passages and books that we faithfully teach [to youth]," Jones writes in the May 8, 2006, issue of the Southern Baptist Texan, "but large portions of Scripture that we overlook or only mention in passing."

Youth "rarely complete an in-depth study of the entire Bible," she said. "Whether it is intentional or not, the result is the same; our teenagers often leave our ministries with an incomplete understanding of biblical truth."

Of course, just knowing certain Bible facts doesn’t make someone a better Christian. As Hershberger puts it, "just knowing information about the Bible isn't transformative." But, she says, without knowing the basics of the faith, "we're lost."

What’s the solution? Burge believes that churches need to take a “curricular approach that tells the story.” Without such an approach, he believes, young people won’t be able to assess the Bible and apply it to their lives.

"They can't do analysis about something they really don't understand," he says.
Hershberger agrees. At Hesston she walks students through the whole Bible story beginning with the creation account in Genesis and ending in Revelation. Through it all she seeks to help them answer this question: How has God worked in history to heal all the broken relationships caused by sin, a rescue that culminates in the life, teachings, death and resurrection of Jesus?

Along the way they provide visual and mental "hooks" to help them remember not only the stories but the sequence and how they fit into the big picture.

But helping youth learn the Bible is about more than better teaching in Sunday school, Hershberger says. Adults also play a role.

"If we want to make the Bible come alive for youth, we have to make it a priority as adults,' she says. 'If we are on fire about learning our faith, it will help youth be more excited."

Reading the Bible to young children is also important, Bontrager says.

"The key is the home," he says. "Students who said their parents read the Bible to them as children score highest on our test."

In 1999, Burge wrote a seminal article in Christianity Today titled, "The Greatest Story Never Told." In it he recounted how he asked youth leaders whether their students were learning the content of the faith and the stories of the Bible.

"'It is hard to find time,'" one told him. "'But I can say that these kids are truly learning to love God.'"

"That is it in a nutshell," Burge wrote. "Christian faith is not being built on the firm foundation of hard-won thoughts, ideas, history or theology. Spirituality is being built on private emotional attachments. Is it any wonder then that our young people and adults do not know the stories of the Bible? That they cannot reason theologically?"

No one, he went on to say "is teaching them. No one is modeling it for them. No one is announcing that the biblical story is The Story that defines our identity and life in the church."

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