State of the Bible - Dr. John Plake | Faithly Podcast

We're beginning to notice, particularly among millennials, that it seems like, you know, yours is the generation that was raised during the New Atheist movement, or you came of age during the New Atheist movement in the early 2000s. And what we've noticed is that that movement is sort of lost steam, they self-destructed. This is the Faithly Podcast. Today on the Faithly Podcast, we're joined by Dr. John Plake. He is the Chief Innovation Officer at the American Bible Society and the Editor-in-Chief of the State of the Bible Research Series. I am super excited to have John on the podcast today. He has spent over three decades in ministry, and he's going to help us to understand how, as church leaders, we can help people to grow in Christ in this cultural moment. So, John, with that, I'm hoping you can start out by giving a sense of your, giving us a sense of your ministry story. You know, I wish Alicia that I could say that, you know, when I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be the Chief Innovation Officer of the American Bible Society. I don't think they had one, and I'm pretty sure I didn't even know the American Bible Society existed, so there's that. But honestly, I grew up in a Christian home in Illinois. My father was a businessman who later went into full-time ministry, and I enjoyed really that process of being connected with pastors and church leaders, seeing how my parents served them. Really felt God called me into full-time ministry myself, which was not a foregone conclusion. It wasn't exactly the family business or anything, but I went to Bible College and kind of did my best to prepare for ministry, pastored for about nine years in Illinois, and then felt God's direction into cross-cultural ministry. And so, went to Wheaton College, did a master's degree in intercultural studies there. It was a wonderful experience. So, big shout out to Wheaton. They were so formative for me, and then did about nine years in missionary service. Some in Latin America, mostly in Asia-Pacific, based out of the Philippines, became something of a, I don't know, a mini expert. If you can be in nine years in ministry in Asia-Pacific, and then in missionary formation, and out of that was asked to go into Christian higher education, help prepare missionaries for service, spent nine years in Christian higher ed, and along the way kind of developed a small geared skill of being able to measure things people can't see, like spiritual health and spiritual formation. And what's the impact of a Christian college or university on a student's spiritual life, and how do their churches play a role in all of that? And it just built one thing on another until one day, a colleague of mine called me up and said, hey, American Bible Society is looking for somebody who understands ministry and research, measurement, and metrics, and they're like five of us in a whole world. It's just not that common, because we really speak different languages in the social sciences and in ministry. So becoming sort of a professional translator, I came to the American Bible Society, started looking at how do Americans understand and experience and feel about the Bible, and then how do we identify the barriers that they're experiencing so we can help them cross those barriers. And it's like discipleship at scale, I guess. How do we look at 300 million Americans and say, we want all of you to know Jesus, and we believe the Bible is a huge part of that journey. So how do we make sure you have access to it? You can engage with it, and when you had a transformative experience with God through Scripture, how do we equip you to tell that story, because your story is so power. Wow. What an incredible and much-needed role in the church landscape today. Now, for how long have you been at American Bible Society, I think about 10 years, is that correct? Holding up one, nine years. Everybody likes it. Almost nine years. Well, so for a lot of that, almost nine years, it's been a lot of bad news, right? Like the data was all going in the wrong way, you know, in terms of people's engagement with the Bible. But this year, in the latest report, we're looking at the 2025 report, there's finally some good news. So can you share a little bit more about that? Sure. You know, other people that I am have been tracking the major trends in religiosity, Bible interaction, in all of those things, since like 1972, the general social survey has been tracking these things year over year. And if you follow the general social survey, what you'll notice is that year over year, one or two percent fewer of everything. Just the slow erosion. Dr. Ed Stetser at Biola University calls this the slow decaying orbit of Christianity in the United States. And we've been watching that, scripture engagement was going down, Bible use was going down. But there was some things that started to happen. They really began in Europe in a thing that our colleagues at the British and foreign Bible society have come to call the quiet revival. They do some really excellent tracking studies there. And they noted that young people were significantly more interested in faith, they were more likely to be attending church, they were more interested in the Bible, than when they had done the study. I forget six or eight years ago. And the numbers were really big, particularly among young adults, they had grown by like 500% in that period of time. Now they were small to begin with. So this isn't to say that suddenly a majority of young people in the United Kingdom are, you know, flooding the doors of every church that they can find. But boy, it was noticeable. And then we began to, we got phone calls. A couple of October's ago, I got this phone call from somebody who had read a Wall Street Journal article that Jeffrey Trachtenberg had put out documenting the fact that Bible sales in America had increased by 22% year over year. And everybody was saying, Hey, what's going on with that? So we were looking really closely in 2025 when we collected the data. And what we began to notice is there are some shifts taking place. The first thing that we noticed was that Bible use is up. Now Bible uses a really coarse measure for us. This is not like, when we talk about Bible users, the opposite of that is a non-user. So people who never use the Bible on purpose versus people who at least sometimes use the Bible on purpose, that line is three or four times per year outside of church. So, you know, that's not where we want people to end, but it's the beginning. It's an interesting signal. And we saw an increase there. And we saw where we saw the increase was really interesting. It was happening among men and men are not normally the Bible engaged in America. It was happening among young people, particularly millennials and older half Gen Z. We were beginning to see it regionally in some places that we didn't expect it like the Northeast where you and I are both located. You know, the Northeast isn't exactly known as the Bible belt. That's the south and the Midwest in America, but we were seeing these big swings taking place. And so I think it was signs of openness and interest and curiosity in the Bible that we're really encouraging to all of us. Something that really caught my attention is the two categories you mentioned of Bible users increasing millennials and men. Millennials being 30 to 45 approximately, right? So that was one category and then men. Do you have any theories as to why these two categories are going up in terms of Bible use right now? Well, there are a lot of theories that are floating around. I'll tell you one of the theories is that it's a blip at what's actually happened is just a data artifact sampling error. It's, you know, all of the things that social scientists kind of look at when we look at data that shows these big swings like millennial Bible use was up 30% year-over-year or men's Bible use was up 21% year-over-year. Overall Bible users up 11 million people in America year-over-year. So those are big swings and when we see stuff like that, I think our first instinct is to go, yeah, there's something wrong with the data. You know, because big population level swings don't often happen and when we see them, we think we made a mistake. But but I'll tell you, I think there's something else going on. Again, not just because it's our data, but because we're seeing it from more than one place. We're we're beginning to notice, particularly among millennials, that it seems like, you know, yours is the generation that was raised during the the New Atheist movement or you came of age during the New Atheist movement in the early 2000s. And what we've noticed is that that movement is sort of lost steam. They self-destructed over a lot of really interesting issues. Justin Briarly who has a great podcast out of the UK has documented the kind of the rise and fall of the New Atheist movement. And I think he puts it best where he says, you know, the world is looking for a better story than the New Atheist were able to tell. And we were left with this crisis of meaning. I also think what's going on is that millennials in particular are coming to the end of what we call emerging adulthood in the social sciences. So emerging adults start arbitrarily at about age 18. And then that emerging adulthood period can extend all the way through age 35 or when they are both married and have children in the household. Just being married doesn't do it. You know, so you know, the story, a lot of millennial couples, even when they were getting together, they're having fur babies, right? They've got pets in the house, but they don't necessarily have children. And that responsibility for raising another human, I think raises these existential questions about, well, what do I believe about the purpose of human life? Why are we here? Is there a bigger story that talks about what is this reason for us to be here? And is there a God? And if so does he have a plan for our lives? And I think what they do is they've been looking back to the way they were raised. And many of them who were raised in a faith tradition are saying, you know, I think we need to go back to church, at least for the kids. And they're finding something there that maybe they didn't experience when they were younger. Maybe they weren't open to it when they were younger. But now they're hearing the Lord speaking to them through Scripture and through God's people. Super interesting. The report also mentions that overall happiness in the US is at a record low. I wondered if folks coming to the end of emerging adulthood and finding the end of themselves might be driving people to the word. You know, I think it probably is that we've documented this particularly among America's youngest adults among Gen Z and this real emotional health crisis. One of the scholars at Harvard University's Chan School of Public Health have put out the human flourishing study and then some colleagues of ours at Baylor University have helped with the global flourishing study. We report on all of that. The reason that we report on that though is because we really think that Jesus said something interesting in the Bible. In John 1010 he says, the thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. So what does it look like? It should show up, right? If we're supposed to have fullness of life well, then shouldn't that show up in human flourishing score? Shouldn't that show up in emotional health and resilience? Shouldn't that show up in decreased loneliness and increased happiness and life satisfaction? And what's interesting is when you look at the youngest adults in America, just as a group, they're not doing well. Their well-being is really low. Their trauma scores are really high. Their emotional insecurity and instability are super high. But when we look at young adults who are Bible-engaged, they have these precocious levels of flourishing. They look like they're boomers all of a sudden with all this life experience. They've been there and they've done that and they bought the T-shirt and all of that. But they don't. They're still young. But what's happening is their engagement with God's Word and with God's people is bringing about a level of resilience for them that we simply don't see in other populations. You have an entire chapter dedicated to this, right? An entire chapter that looks at well-being, right? Like loneliness, trauma, stress, self-care, like these are buzzwords with Gen Z. I know pastors are looking for ways to connect scripture with these things that Gen Z cares about. You've got an entire chapter dedicated to talking about this and talking about how users of the Bible see these things different. Yeah, we do. I think Gen Z, next Gen stuff is a real focus for us at American Bible Society. We really, really care about these issues and we're focused on it to a great degree. I think one of the other interesting things that we noticed about Gen Z was actually in the church engagement chapter. What we built a scale for church engagement, what's more engaged or less engaged in church, and something really stood out about Gen Z. They have fairly low levels of church engagement. And in particular, they find that they don't have great opportunities to use their gifts and skills within the church. I think young adults can be overlooked by the older people who occupy the seats of ministry within a church organization. And so we really need to encourage older leaders to reach down and invite and welcome younger leaders who are emerging, who God has gifted and given them great abilities. And the second piece was they need someone who really cares about their spiritual journey. They're looking for mentors. They're looking for that relational connection that can only come from the church. And you know, a Bible Society can't do that. We can highlight the data, but we're looking to pastors and church leaders and saying, hey, pay attention to Gen Z. They're they're 29 years old and younger now. And they are the emerging leaders for the church. Don't just isolate them in the youth group. Don't disregard them when they're in college and university, but welcome them and find ways to mentor them into increasingly using their gifts and skills to benefit others. Let's talk a little bit about digital. On the podcast, we've recently had folks on from you version representing the digital Bible. And we've also interviewed guests from Alibaster, which they have a lot to say about beautifully printed Bibles. And we see people engaging in both like both categories are growing. When people are engaging with the Bible in a digital format, how are they doing it? Well, I'm a huge fan of you version. Big shout out to them. We have all kinds of content that we make available on that platform as well. And I love what Alibaster is doing. It's interesting. I like them personally, but I really like them for data driven reasons. So when we look at digital Bible engagement, there are two big groups that are most attracted to and most likely to be using digital Bible tools, whether that's a you version or a logos or a unique Bible gateway. Lots of digital solutions out there. The first group is what we call the movable middle. And when it comes to Bible engagement, these are the folks who are like, I think the Bibles are really good idea. And I know there's something in there for me, but they're often confused by the Bible. If you hand them a Bible, they may not know how to find what they're looking for. They would revere it in a way. They'd say, wow, this is really cool, especially if it's one of those Alibaster Bibles. They're just like, oh, this thing is so beautiful. I love this. But I don't know what to do with it. I really get stuck there. And so digital Bible really helps to break that down and create user journeys for people who are just beginning. So like Bible reading plans. When we look at people doing Bible reading plans on the you version platform, those that are in the movable middle, they tend to start with themselves. They're starting with, hey, I've got an issue. And if the Bibles got wisdom for me, please let me find that. And so it's about anxiety and anger. It's about parenting. It's about addiction. It's about who we are in Christ. And so you can see people bringing their questions to Scripture and digital tools help them find responsibly curated answers from the Bible. The other group is the really Bible engaged. The Bible engaged in Bible centered. They love digital tools for the same reason I do. I'm like on the logus end of the screen, right? I'm digging into the original language and I'm using it to do word studies. And I'm using it like this advanced concordance and all in one sort of resource librarian that brings me the things that I need to better understand Scripture at a deeper level. They're using it to prepare small group topics and conversations and discussion guides and things like that. So those are kind of the two big camps. But what's interesting about all of them is nobody's leaving print. Print is really strong. And so for those who are already Bible engaged, digital is an adjunct to their print Bible. But they like to make notes in the margin and they like to have their chair and their coffee and their place where they go to get into God's word every day. And so I think these two kinds of solutions analog and digital are going to live alongside one another. The thing that we don't see as much interest in is value Bibles in a way. I mean, value Bibles have a place in the marketplace. But a lot of that growth that we're seeing in Bible sales is in really beautiful, well-crafted Bibles. And I actually had an AI bot going through and reading comments on Bible sales in Amazon and say, well, what are people saying? And their number one complaint is they don't like cheap binding perfect bound, but they really, really don't like bonded leather because it delaminates. And so you get these, they're talking about the quality of the book and of the printing. They want the quality of the package to be related to the quality of the content. Super interesting. Can you delve a little deeper into another aspect of digital? When I think about digital Bible access and engagement, I immediately think of U version or apps like U version. But what your report highlighted for me is that that's not the only digital platform people are going to. Depending on the age of the user, they could be going to the Bible app that is very popular, but they could just be going to a website or they could. And this was surprising to me because I'm not in that young generation, but they could be going to YouTube for Bible engagement. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah, it's really interesting. When we look at Gen Z, they are much more likely than everybody else, like really more likely to use things like YouTube videos and TikTok. Actually, consuming it in their Insta Reels or whatever, putting something in motion. And they're also more likely to listen to podcasts and people talking. So they'll go for a walk or go for a run, or they're on their commute, or they're doing whatever it is that they're doing. But they've got this in their ear. It's interesting. It's not just younger people. They are disproportionately more likely to do that. But my father passed away at the end of last year, and my mom and dad had always had this tradition, this custom of reading through the Bible every year together. And mom had suddenly lost her conversation partner in that. And I said, well, have you ever considered the Bible recap? And she's like, no, what's that? And I introduced her to the podcast. It was fun. She came and stayed with us over the holidays. And every morning, I would find her listening to Tara Lee and doing the Bible recap because it gave her somebody to do it with. And I think that was super important because, you know, our walk with Christ is not to do it yourself project. We need community. And that community is now in person and digital. And there's it's all of the things all at once. I'm sorry to hear about your father. I want to talk about another slice of data in your report that I thought was super interesting, which is ethnicity. So I saw that black Americans continue to have the highest percentage of Bible users overall. That wasn't very surprising to me. But what was surprising was amongst my people, Asian Americans, I saw the biggest jump in Bible use. I was wondering if there's anything you think might be behind that. You know, it is an interesting phenomenon. And studying Asian Americans would require a whole different sample to really get something that's that's indicative of the Asian American experience. It completely. But we're noticing some things going on in big cities in America. One of them that has a high Asian American population is actually San Francisco. And so we did a study in San Francisco Bay area and over sample there. And one of the interesting things that we noticed was that the effect of baby boomers is decreasing. So this is a weird kind of data statistics thing. But there's a generation older than the boomers that we call the elders. But that group has been shrinking to the point that we couldn't study them as a generation group all by themselves. And so a few years ago we put boomers and elders together into a group we call boomers plus. What we're noticing is that baby boomers are getting weirder. And my apologies to those of you who might be humors. I'm from Gen X. So I know it feels like I'm throwing rocks at baby boomers. But they're just not like anybody else in America. And one of the interesting things about baby boomers is they formed very strong opinions about the Bible and faith. And they probably formed them in the late 60s and early 70s. And they haven't changed them very much. If anything, they've intensified them over the years. So if they were for the Bible, they're really for the Bible. And if they were against the Bible, they're really against the Bible. Well, when we put boomers and elders together, elders were more Bible engaged, more more Bible friendly. And they were attenuating the weirdness of that boomers plus group. So in the Bay Area sample, when we removed boomers from the sample, you can almost think of this as like, okay, remove the haydashberry, unreconstructed hippies from the population. I know that's a horrible over generalization. So again, apologies to my baby boomer friends. But when we removed boomers from the sample, we saw all kinds of interest in the Bible that was being masked by that older generation. Now, here's why I bring that up in the Asian American context. Asian Americans have had an interesting journey. And there's been, you know, you look at the immigration patterns when the Johnson administration, for instance, had a a big open door for Asian American students to come to the United States and to study in many states. You have Taiwanese immigration. You have all of these different vectors of the Asian American experience. And I think what's happening is that younger Asian Americans are asserting their own way, their own view. And they're showing up in beginning to have an influence on what we think of as the Asian American descriptor. I still think it's cut a lot by generation. And I think Asian Americans, like many of us, all of us came from someplace else for the most part. We're becoming more typical of Americans and less typical of our ethnic heritage. And Asian Americans still tend to be concentrated in urban areas. And so we're seeing this kind of young urban interest in the Bible that we haven't seen in previous years. And Asian Americans are part of that. Interesting. So I would love to talk a little bit about the regional differences we're seeing. The South still has the highest percentages of Bible use. But there are certain places that seem almost impenetrable, like the Northeast where we are that are starting to catch up. So I'd love to hear a little bit more. Yeah, both the Northeast and the West Coast have kind of been these places where traditionally religion and faith looked a lot different. So even within the Christian tradition, they're more likely to be Roman Catholic than they are than the rest of the country is. And Bible engagement among Roman Catholics is traditionally lower than it is among Protestants. Partly, again, there's an age-related effect here because a lot of Catholics go back to the pre-Vatican to get kind of traditions in the Catholic Church. And so we're seeing that younger Catholics are more likely to interact with the Bible and have positive experiences with the Bible. Part of that is change in the Catholic Church where the Pope is saying, hey, actually the last two or three popes are saying, I wish you would carry the scripture around with you all the time and you'd refer to it regularly. That just didn't happen before the Vatican II conference. But we're also noticing that I think Tim Keller was really great at talking about how cities are these change engines for the nation. And we have some of the biggest cities in America that are located in the Northeast, get Boston, you got New York, and in the West where Los Angeles really all of Southern California and part of Northern California are these are the really big influences on the American culture. And we've just seen big changes there, much more likely to open the Bible, much more likely to be curious and interested than we've ever seen before. And so while Bible interest hasn't eroded in the South or in the Midwest, it has leaped up in these other parts of the country where we haven't seen it before. Super interesting. The report is over 200 pages. So for the busy church leaders who are interested, who want to make use of this great data, can you talk about what you have on offer for them to engage with the data and the insights? There are a lot of ways to dig into this. I think the first thing is just go to stateofthebible.org and there are a ton of ways here. If you sign up for our newsletter, we'll send you an email from time to time. One thing to know, one thing that you can do about it, just try to make it bite size. We have some insights videos that take some of the key findings from our chapters. And in three minutes or less in kind of a YouTube shorts format, you can just play one of those videos and dive in at whatever level you would like to. We're actually making some changes to make it easier to interact with the content without having to download the entire report. And those will be coming out with our new release beginning April the 9th, our 2026 data is going to be coming out. And again, fascinating story about what's going on in America as we look at these big trends we've been talking about. But we're also going to do a focus on parenting. We do another focus on AI. We do a look at Americans beliefs and attitudes around the supernatural and miracles and healing and all of those kinds of things. So a lot of interesting stuff to come in 2026. And that should hit your inbox April 9th. But if you want to catch up now, just go to stateofthebible.org podcast is there. Insights videos are there. And of course, you can sign up to just be notified when something new comes out. Awesome. Now one thing I didn't want to neglect to ask you about is next step church. Can you touch on that a little bit and like what kind of a digital tool that is for church leaders? Sure. We really have two pieces of the next step platform. One of them is next step for individuals. And you can find that at nextstep.bible. And that's really a place where anybody who's listening is like, you know, I'm trying to find Bible engagement resources and experiences that are going to help me grow that feel like they're tailored to where I am in my journey with God. If you're just starting out or you Jesus little brother or sister, you can go there, answer a few questions and we will match you to the best resources and experiences that can help you grow. I think currently there are over 20,000 resources in that database. And it uses the answers to your questions to connect you to the things that are just right to take the next step. So that's next step for individuals. Next step for church is a church assessment. And it's a church health assessment that is built on some of the learning that we had from when the Willow Creek Association did the reveal assessment, which at the time was the largest ever study of the spiritual lives of Christians in America. And we've been able to build on top of that platform to add human flourishing to add scripture engagement so that a pastor or church leader can conduct a completely free congregational assessment, run that survey, and then online and instantly they're able to see, how's my church doing? How's my leadership style working? Where are we and what are our next steps for? Really, mission health and effectiveness. And so there's a ton there. You can go to church.nextstep.bible, church.nextstep.bible. And that will get you all the information. If you have questions, there's a help button. You can click on it and we'll be glad to work with you. Thank you so much for laying all that out there for us, John. These are a lot of really, really helpful tools and resources that you can put in church leader's hands to really help their congregation to engage more effectively with the Bible. Now, I want to leave it with this last question. You have such a unique vantage point, John, into the state of Christendom, into how people are engaging. When you look at all the data and you think about all the conversations you've had, what gives you the most hope for the future of the church? You know, I think there are leaders across the church in all kinds of denominations and all kinds of places who just care very deeply about the people in their congregation and in their community. And I love that care. That's the heart of Christ for people. And I think what I would encourage them to do is to pair that passion and that concern with really, really good insights and information so that they can make great strategic decisions. You know, it's interesting. You think about the ministry that Jesus had and how he walked around among people. He lived 30 years basically doing qualitative research, trying to figure out how am I going to minister to these people before he really did his first big acts that we can follow. And I think what we try to do is empower pastors and church leaders to be led by the spirit in an informed environment so that they can know the things that they might otherwise be blind to. I know when I was pastoring, I knew the people in my church pretty well. It's a small church, you know, that was easy to do. And then I was at a much larger church and suddenly I didn't know everybody anymore. And sometimes what I thought I knew about my congregation wasn't exactly right. And I needed others. And I needed to use tools to help me see things that I might be blind to just because I'm human and I'm limited. And so I think whether it's state of the Bible helping us understand our neighbors, next step for church helping you deeply understand your congregation or even next step to Bible that helps you understand where you are in your journey and what you need to go next. We want to come alongside and just give that great objective lens and perspective on where the opportunities are for the gospel. And then I know we can trust God to help us to meet those needs as we see them. That's so good. Thank you so much, John, for the conversation today. I've learned so much and I really, I can't wait to get my hands on the 26th report and dig into the new insights that you have for us all. Thanks Alicia.