The American Bible Society and the Barna Group, the conservative Christian research organization, have teamed up to survey how folks in the US feel about the Christian Scriptures in 2016. This is an annual survey the two organizations have undertaken for the last 10 years. They are based on interviews of over 65k people in the various media markets across the US. What makes a city a Bible-minded city? Cities with folks meeting the following criteria;
Individuals who report reading the Bible in a typical week and who strongly assert the Bible is accurate in the principles it teaches are considered to be Bible-minded. This definition captures action and attitude—those who both engage and esteem the Christian scriptures. The rankings thus reflect an overall openness or resistance to the Bible in various U.S. cities.
![bible-minded-cities-2016-(external-draft)[3]](https://www.episcopalcafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/bible-minded-cities-2016-external-draft3.jpg)
The Barna Group will also sell the demographic breakdown of the faith profile for any of the surveyed markets.
Both graphics are from the Barna Group website story of the survey.
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A Bible-minded city…
A place where eating seafood and pork is banned, where slavery is legal, where a brother is forced to marry his deceased brother’s wife, and where they build a special place in downtown for public stoning ?
A Bible-minded city …
A place where good news is brought to the poor, the oppressed go free, the alien is regarded as the citizen, the workers receive the wages owed them, the sick and imprisoned are visited, debts are forgiven, and daily bread is shared.
Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.
Of course, we might point out that it was the Christ-spirit driving that same concept in Israel. Such as mentioned in the Prologue to the Gospel of John.
Concern for the poor and oppressed, etc. is also reflected in the Hebrew Scriptures. It didn’t start with Jesus’ human ministry.
Sounds more like a Christ-minded city to me! 🙂
My gosh. This kind of bizarre exaggeration is congenial at the Café without any let or hindrance.
Are suggestion that those precepts from the Bible are exaggerated?…my, oh my !!
Selective literalism anybody ?
I wish Barna had posted the wording of the questions, as they sometimes do for these surveys. If you ask a question in evangelical language (“accuracy” of biblical “principles”) to people who talk about their Bible reading habits in totally different words (like a Mormon might describe it as “scripture study” instead, even though they’re often using the exact same Bible) you’re sure to miss plenty of people.