Bible illiteracy and what it means for the Gospel

I recently read an article in Christianity Today regarding staggeringly poor Bible literacy rates found in the US and UK.

“Around 30 percent of [British] parents don’t know Adam and Eve, David and Goliath, or the Good Samaritan are in the Bible. To make matters worse, 27 percent think Superman is or might be a biblical story. More than 1 in 3 believes the same about Harry Potter. And more than half (54 percent) believe The Hunger Games is or might be a story from the Bible.

“But it’s more than simply not knowing stories from Scripture. Our lack of biblical literacy has led to a lack of biblical doctrine. LifeWay Research found that while 67 percent of Americans believe heaven is a real place, 45 percent believe there are many ways to get there—including 1 in 5 evangelical Christians. More than half of evangelicals (59 percent) believe the Holy Spirit is a force and not a personal being—in contrast to the orthodox biblical teaching of the Trinity being three Persons in one God. As a whole, Americans, including many Christians, hold unbiblical views on hell, sin, salvation, Jesus, humanity, and the Bible itself.”

This article dates back to 2017, and in my limited experience, things have not improved.

GoodSeed was created for ones such as these, those who are biblically illiterate. Whether from an Islamic, New Age, Secular or even a Christianized background, most people these days do best with an approach to the Bible that assumes little or no prior knowledge; that builds foundations carefully; that takes into account worldviews and their common hang-ups; and that gives a creation-to-cross overview of Scripture.