America the Most Biblical Nation
No surprise - and it entirely explains why the social structure of the United States, in spite of many glaring problems, is fundamentally one of the healthiest in all the Judeo-Christian West:
In preparation for the next gathering of the Catholic bishops around the world, the Catholic Biblical Federation has conducted an extensive survey regarding how the Bible is read in 13 different countries. The survey reports that the U.S. is the one of most Bible-believing nations and the one that is most interested in the Scriptures.
The survey was held to obtain a sense of the influence of the Scriptures to assist the bishops in their October 5-26, 2008 synod on “The Word of God in the Life and the Mission of the Church”.
Thus far, 13,000 interviews have been held in the United States, the United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland, and Russia. According to Vatican analyst Sandro Magister, the results released on April 28 “cover the entirety of the adult population” and the results pertaining solely to Catholics will be published at a later date. Results from Argentina, South Africa, the Philippines, and Australia are still being collated.
In Magister’s view, the results of the survey show that, “the Bible is not present and influential in all countries in the same way. The wave of secularization produces very different effects from region to region. In the United States and in Italy, these effects appear to be more contained than in other countries of Western Europe, among which France emerges as the most de-Christianized nation.”
The Bible is present in many houses in Italy and the U.S., 75% and 93% respectively, but in France less than half of the people have a Bible at home.
However, the only place where the Scriptures have been read in the last year is the United States, which comes in at 75%. Despite high ownership, Italian Bible reading is reported at 27%, and in Spain the number falls to 20%.
All Christians owe a debt of gratitude in this to our Evangelical brothers and sisters who have been intense in their missionary zeal to get the Bible into as many hands as possible, and getting people to actually read it; I think the ready availability not only of the Bible, but of people willing to take the time to teach it explains why the United States is so deep in the scriptures - and our depth of religious knowledge is what keeps us from the worst aspects of the post-Christian Culture of Death. I think, also, that our liberal friends understand this, and understand that the greatest stumbling block to remaking us in the image of the EU is that too many Americans have access to truth, and thus don’t fall for the left’s siren song.
In the ongoing and intensifying culture war, the best defense for our civilization is a citizenry ever more informed about who we are, where we come from and what is the basis of our civilization. The rock of our way of life is The rock, as it were, and just so long as a majority of us know this, so will we be well-positioned to beat back the efforts of the left to destroy our civilization.
14 comments May 5th, 2008
