Since 2011, our team at Barna has worked alongside our friends at American Bible Society to track the State of the Bible, representing one of the largest data sets on how the population perceives and engages the Bible. This year, American Bible Society collected and analyzed the State of the Bible data, collaborating with Barna to highlight the connections between the Bible and the broader story of faith in America.

The following article offers five notable findings from American Bible Society’s State of the Bible 2021 report.

Bible Users in the U.S. Increased in 2021 The proportion of Bible Users in the United States has remained fairly constant for the past decade. In typical years, approximately half of American adults reach for the Bible at least occasionally. In 2014, our team estimated that an all-time high of 53 percent of American adults were Bible Users, and the low point of 48 percent was reached in 2019.

In January 2020, we estimated that Bible Users—defined as individuals who read, listen to, or pray with the Bible on their own at least three or four times a year outside of a church service or church event—had reached a 10-year nadir, registering only 48 percent of Americans. In June, as COVID-19 took hold, we recorded a drop in the proportion of Americans who never use the Bible. That figure fell from 35 percent in 2019 to 31 percent in the summer of 2020. As of January 2021, the proportion of American adults who never use the Bible has fallen to 29 percent, its lowest point since 2016. Along with the drop in “nevers,” we observed a modest rise in Bible Users.

Americans Largely Believe the Nation Would Fare Poorly Without the Bible Over half of U.S. adults (54%) believe that America would be worse off without the Bible, which is actually a 5-percent increase since last year (49% in 2020). One in seven Americans (14%) believes the nation would be better without the Bible, essentially the same as last year’s 13 percent. While the proportion with a more negative view remained about the same, there has been a shift from last year for those in the middle. One in three American adults (33%) believe America would be the same with or without the Bible. Five percent of those who were ambivalent last year have moved to a more Bible-affirming view in 2021.