by Gwion Wynne-Jones, Spectator
We are often told these days, most recently in James Marriott’s much talked about book The New Dark Ages, that the world has a problem with reading. During such an emergency, then, it could be quite invidious to claim that some manifestations of this problem may be more or less bad than others. But it is difficult not to bemoan especially one crisis that cannot be blamed entirely on bloated screen times: the decline of biblical literacy.
I have observed this first-hand when teaching history undergraduates at Oxford. These are the brightest and most hard-working young historians in the world. But it is not an uncommon occurrence to be met with blank stares when I mention the prophet Jeremiah or question them on the Exodus narrative. Direct excerpts from scripture such as the Psalms regularly pepper the primary sources students analyse, but these are likely to pass them by unheeded and unidentified. In short, even the most capable British undergraduates today struggle to recognise Christian references that would have been obvious to most students – indeed, most Britons – only a few decades ago.
This should not be surprising given that a 2014 Bible Society survey found widespread ignorance of basic biblical stories and figures among British children; 85 per cent were unfamiliar with Solomon, 61 per cent with the parable of the Good Samaritan, 93 per cent with Job, 72 per cent with Daniel in the Lions’ Den, 87 per cent with Saul on the Road to Damascus, and 43 per cent with the Crucifixion. It is safe to assume that those numbers have not improved in the 12 years since the survey was taken.