Bible sales surged in 2024 but is it a cause for celebration?

By Leonardo Blair, Senior Reporter Tuesday, December 03, 2024

While total U.S. print book sales were up less than 1% this year through the end of October, Bible sales surged 22% compared to the same period last year, according to book tracker Circana BookScan. But is this a cause for celebration among Christians?

BookScan data show that in 2023, 14.2 million Bibles were sold in the U.S., while in the first 10 months of this year sales reached 13.7 million.

Publishers suggested in a recent Wall Street Journal report that rising anxiety, a search for hope, or highly focused marketing and designs are possible reasons fueling the spike in demand for the good book.

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“People are experiencing anxiety themselves, or they’re worried for their children and grandchildren,” Jeff Crosby, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, told the WSJ. “It’s related to artificial intelligence, election cycles … and all of that feeds a desire for assurance that we’re going to be OK.”

J. Mark Bertrand, founder of Lectio.org, a website about Bible design, suggested niche marketing of Scripture has been helpful too.

“I’d like to say there is a craving for knowledge of scripture, but a lot of smart people are thinking about Bible marketing and catering to every whim for Bible study,” he said.

For Tyndale House Publishers’ Amy Simpson, however, she has seen a surge in Bible engagement, particularly among members of Gen Z and college students.

“You have a generation that wants to find things that feel more solid,” she said.  

While the sales of Bibles in America this year might look impressive, it’s hardly surprising, as according to The New Yorker, “the Bible is the bestselling book of the year, every year.” And despite America’s increasing secularization, Barna found in 2013 that nearly nine out of 10, 88%, of Americans own a Bible. Ten years earlier, the percentage of Americans who said they own a Bible was 92%.

American Bible owners were found to have, on average, 3.5 Bibles in their home, while about 24% reported owning six or more Bibles.

In 2022, while commenting on the American Worldview Inventory, George Barna, director of research at the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, noted in a release that parents of preteens, children younger than 13, “are in a state of spiritual distress” as American adherence to biblical Christianity fades even in churches, and warned that a "tragic crash” is coming.

He explained that this problem was largely ignored by the Church because indicators like church attendance, Bible sales and donations had “remained sufficiently robust to feel reassured.”

“The disinterest and even disrespect many children show to their elders is partially a reaction to the lack of authenticity and integrity they experience in the presence of parents, teachers, pastors, and other cultural leaders. Children sometimes feel compelled to ignore adults whose talk and walk are inconsistent,” Barna said.

“When children are exposed to teaching — through words or actions, whether formal or informal — that are contradictory, they naturally conclude that the Christian faith is inherently contradictory and therefore may not be what they are seeking as a life philosophy,” Barna added. “Young people may be interested in and intrigued by Bible stories, but unless the underlying life principles are both identified and exemplified, children are likely to miss out on those life-changing truths.”

Data published by ACU show that of an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6%, or 15 million of them, actually hold a biblical worldview.

The study shows, in general, that while a majority of America’s self-identified Christians, including many who identify as Evangelical, believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and is the Creator of the universe, more than half reject a number of biblical teachings and principles, including the existence of the Holy Spirit.

According to Barna, “If ever there was a time when our nation was desperate for a grassroots spiritual revival led by the remnant in the pews who still revere God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and truth, now is that time.”