Editor’s note: The following was originally published for the Western Standard by FBB writer Shafer Parker. We republish it here, in part for those who’ve not yet read it, but also to thank the editors of the Western Standard for allowing FBB to address important Christian worldview issues in their publication.

By Shafer Parker

In 2018 the Associated Press reported that burning Bibles in China was still a thing. But a survey of Canadian attitudes last November indicates that Canada’s government will never need to fire up its flamethrowers. All it need do is leave the nation’s Bibles and other sacred books where they are—out of sight and largely ignored. Sponsored by the Canadian Bible Society, in conjunction with the Canadian Christian think tank Cardus and the Angus Reid Institute, the survey found that 56% of adults said they never read from a sacred text, neither the Bible, the Quran, nor anything else. And when you consider that another 21% claimed to read a sacred text “only rarely,” meaning less than “a few times a year,” it becomes clear that a large majority of Canadians seek their sense of the sacred somewhere else. Or nowhere else.

Though not exactly old news, the information in the previous paragraph was published last December. But earlier this month Cardus and Angus Reid published a deeper dive into the same data, this time focused on the relationship between the Bible and Evangelical Christians, Mainline Protestants, and Roman Catholics. Except for one subgroup, the results were similar to Canadians as a whole. Fully 51% of mainline Protestants claimed they had “never read or engaged with the Bible,” and 59% of Roman Catholics said the same. Evangelicals were different, with over 80% saying they had engaged with the Bible in the past 12 months. In fact, Evangelical exceptionalism came through repeatedly. Whether the question had to do with the frequency of reading the Bible at home—alone or with other family members—listening to recordings of Scripture, meditating on Biblical texts, or engaging with the Bible in Church worship or in small groups, Evangelicals were streets ahead of everyone else.

Cardus then broke out the “biblically engaged” from among all three Christian divisions to get answers to “why” questions. Asked, “What are the main reasons why you read or study the Bible,” the answers were all about personal comfort and guidance. “To be closer to God” came in first, but only just ahead of “to learn about the nature of God,” to find “comfort” and gain “wisdom,” and to get “direction on how to treat others.” The three groups were similar in their responses—it included, after all, the keeners from all three groups. Moreover, all three groups listed “guidance for life,” as their number one “take away” from reading and studying the Bible, followed by “meaning” for life and the ability to “connect” to feelings and emotions.”

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Paradoxically, fewer than 30% of the “biblically engaged” supported the Bible’s importance when it came to giving “direction” for society and institutions. That is what happens when multiple generations are raised on the virtues of diversity, multiculturalism, and secularism. Today’s Canadians, including many Christians, embrace the notion of a hard separation between church and state. As the survey reveals, except for Evangelicals, they’ve been trained to believe the Bible is sexist, racist, and homophobic, and therefore too offensive to mention in public. Moreover, they are blind to historical proofs that by all the standard metrics (personal freedoms, protection of private property, economic opportunity, mobility, advancement of science and technology, and voluntary charity, this last noted by both Cardus and a previous survey by the Fraser Institute) a Bible-based culture is inherently better than any other option. In other words, in the minds of too many Christians the worldview of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has triumphed over the Word. Or, to put it another way, Christians are embarrassed to proclaim the wisdom of God’s Word in the public square, thus proving Ms. Atwood has more influence than Moses.

Not surprisingly, the Cardus survey reveals that when it comes to the question of what the Bible is, Canadian Christians are all over the map. In all three divisions the greatest number, approximately 34%, agreed that the Bible “is the inspired Word of God but not necessarily to be interpreted literally.” A further 25% checked that the Bible “is an important and wise book of fables, history, and moral stories.” Only 9% agreed that the Bible “is the actual Word of God to be interpreted literally, word for word.” In other words, among Canadian Bible readers, only a handful support Biblical inerrancy. Other choices included, “The Bible is the actual Word of God to be interpreted through a religious tradition” (12%), a “wise book of fables, history, and moral stories” (approximately 26%), and “an ancient book with no relevance today” (13%, except for Evangelicals, who only scored 3% for this last position).

The small number of Canadian Christians embracing the most conservative position— “to be interpreted literally, word for word”—may indicate a weakness in the survey itself. How so? The problem is in the phrase “word for word.” Remember, most Christians read the Bible in translation, either English or some other modern language. Whether talking about a news article, a novel, a textbook, or a holy book, to be effective in the target language, translators must work with phrases and ideas, not individual words. And where the Bible is concerned, at no time in history have conservative Bible scholars believed or practised anything else.

Cardus did their survey respondents a disservice by not providing a selection like this; “We affirm that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God.” This is Article III of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, and in this writer’s opinion, had something like this been an option, it might have changed the results considerably. It is possible that many who selected “is the inspired Word of God but not necessarily to be interpreted literally” have a higher view of Scripture than the statement contains but chose it only after shying away from “word for word.”

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