The Bible is part of the standard equipment for most households in Germany. However, it is more used as a furniture supplement, a decoration and sometimes as a doorstop, and less as reading material, the written truth and certainly not as the word of God. The proportion of people reading the Bible is only marginal. A welcome circumstance for the churches.
Inhalt / Content
Study proves tiny minority of Bible readers
“You don’t read the Bible, you have it,” is a saying that usually applies to Holy Scripture. Very many households also have a Bible deposited somewhere between encyclopedias, novels and life guides, but this is rarely picked up to read. In addition to the Bible there are also signposts such as Feng Shui, card reading, “discovering the divine energy within” and other esoteric outpourings.
The interest in the world’s “biggest selling” book on earth is huge. Even 40 percent of non-religious people find the Bible interesting to read. But the gap between the interest in owning it and the interest in reading it is almost as huge. This is the result of a recently published study by the University of Leipzig.
Only 1.6 out of 100 read the Bible daily
More than every second person in Germany owns a paper Bible. In contrast, the proportion of Germans who read the Bible every day is only 1.6 percent (2014: 3.1 percent). The proportion of those who pick up a Bible to read at least once a week is twice as high (3.2%). Almost a third (30%) open the Bible once a year, as “n-tv” reported.
Although the proportion of people with a Bible in their household has remained more or less stable since 2014, the desire to read has continued to decrease over the same period. Of those who actually read the Bible, 90 percent believe that Scripture provides core norms and values for society. The proportion of non-readers is 63 percent. However, how far this view goes beyond a reference to general (esoteric) “wisdom literature” is not known.
Of the Bible readers, 11 percent use an electronic form such as e-book, app and the Internet.
It is interesting to note that almost half (46%) of those surveyed believe that politics in general should be based on the Bible.
For this study, 1,209 people aged 16 and over were interviewed, regardless of church affiliation.
The churches profit from the Bible ignorance
As in the distant past, so today. Above all, nothing better can happen to the Roman Catholic Church than an extremely low interest in the contents of the Bible. Even if the interest of people in the gospel in earlier, “not yet enlightened times” was disproportionately higher than it is today, the Church of Rome has known with all its literal violence to prevent people from getting hold of such a copy and doing research in it could.
Only with the Reformation was this “ban from Rome” broken and, alongside Martin Luther, it was also William Tyndale who translated the Holy Scriptures into their respective national languages and, thanks to the already invented printing press, were able to spread this to the masses. While Luther could not be caught by the captors of Rome, Tyndale had to be imprisoned for the disclosure of the gospel at the instigation of the Roman Catholic Church, was subjected to embarrassing questioning and was finally strangled and burned at the stake.
Even Protestant churches are rubbing their hands
To date, the situation has changed again. While the Roman Catholic Church still has absolutely zero interest in people learning the truth from the Bible, the Protestant churches are now doing the same. Their widespread philosophies and worldviews have just as little to do with what the Bible says as the catechism of the Roman Church. The Bible, i.e. the word of God, could not be destroyed over the centuries. So the method of alterations and falsifications has been used for quite some time. Just as the German Bible Society, an institution sponsored by the Protestant and Catholic Church, practices with their modern editions of the Bible.
The truth will continue to be suppressed
Another change compared to Roman tyranny between the end of antiquity and up to the time of “the Enlightenment” is the strategy that has since been adapted. Detention, torture (in addition to Guantanamo on a large scale) and executions could not (currently) be justified to the general public. So the motto is no longer torture and death, but “lovely seduction“. The goal is the acceptance of the substitute religion “nature worship” which is already in preparation. Violence will return, however, and the Church, which still calls itself Protestant, will take a zealous leadership role in the persecution.
The persecuted will be precisely that small minority who take the Bible in their hands, read the Word of God and not only understand it, but also believe in it and understand it as the truth. And one of those truths will be the focus for the foreseeable future.
