This is such an interesting article to me. I am a reader and I am raising readers. We highly value books in our home. But I am acutely aware that we are more and more a cultural anomaly. *NOT* superior- just… different.
Several years ago a friend who serves as a Wycliffe translator told me that linguists are referring to the West as postliterate. People do not read and engage with books the way we did a generation ago. Not to mention a real literacy problem in the US- only 33% of U.S public school fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders are performing at or above proficiency levels (NCES 2022). How do we effectively teach a text-based faith to a population who increasingly does not, and cannot, read proficiently? [Note: this is not an anti-public-schools post. It’s just a population statistic. Homeschooling isn’t the answer for everyone by any means and schools are, in many cases, full of teachers doing vital work.]
As I discussed this with my friend from a Bible translation and missionary standpoint, it got my wheels turning furiously and I think about it all the time.
Part of me wants to go on a rampage that people need to read. But I think that’s fighting the wrong battle. We want people to love God and be saturated with His Word- but that doesn’t mean heaping on shame for not engaging regularly with a print text- many of us are well versed on shame-based discipleship and can speak to how ineffective it is for true transformation.
What does it look like to faithfully make disciples in a post-literate time? It’s made me a huge proponent of audio Bibles. I try to be sure to read Scripture aloud and thoroughly explain context when I teach groups and never assume familiarity. These thoughts at the end of Christianity Today’s article are where I often land. Such good things for us to ponder as we consider the unique cultural landscape we live in.
“Churches in the modern West should accept that we live in a postliterate world and therefore must minister to a postliterate people. Concretely, this means accepting that most church members are not and never will be readers, and that this is not a problem—that it does not make them less than other believers, that it does not preclude their maturity in the faith and service of God.
…Perhaps we need more—much more—oral reading, even memorization and performance, of the Scriptures in the assembly. Perhaps we need longer and more detailed exposition of the text in the sermon. Perhaps we need to reimagine what “biblical literacy” can mean: not necessarily the reading and rereading of one’s personal Bible, but a mind, imagination, and vocabulary shot through with the stories and characters and events of Holy Scripture.”
