Digital millennials and the Bible

Discover how the Bible is perceived by 'digital millennials' in this report created in partnership with CODEC and Barna.

Joseph, Saul, Mary, Esther – mention these names to most Christians and they’ll quickly tell you they’re Bible characters. This can often lead to the assumption that there is a high rate of biblical literacy amongst the rest of the population, when, in reality, millions of British young people have grown up without much exposure to Christianity or the Bible at all.

So, to find out what younger people do know, we partnered with CODEC at the University of Durham to has conduct a landmark study of Bible perceptions and engagement among millennials [adults ages 18–35] to see what they really think about the Bible.

We expected to find widespread scepticism or even hostility towards Christianity and the Bible among those unconnected with the Church. Yet this study uncovered that attitudes are more likely to be neutral than negative among young people, affirming Bible Society’s mission to help society find relevance and see the value in the Bible.

We also found that print is not dead amongst tech-savvy millennials.  Despite a surge in electronic media, over half of ‘digital millennials’ mainly read books in print. Further, more young-adult Bible users prefer a print copy of the Bible to a digital version, though plenty do use a phone-based app or search for Scripture online.

Some of the findings in the following pages surprised us and we hope they will challenge and surprise you too as we all seek to engage young people with God’s word in new and creative ways.

We partnered with CODEC at the University of Durham to design the research and with Barna Global to produce this report.

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