Three out of 10 British children have next to no
understanding of the Bible and their parents aren’t that knowledgeable, either.
A survey released February 7 by the Bible
Society, founded in 1804 to spread knowledge about the Scriptures, said most
boys and girls aged 8 to 15 years old did not know that Adam and Eve, Noah’s
Ark or Jesus’ birth were rooted in the Bible.
More than a third of the 800 children surveyed
did not know that David and Goliath and the story of the Good Samaritan were
Bible tales. One in 10 mistakenly thought the story about King Midas and Icarus
was in the Bible.
But not just children are Bible ignorant. Nearly
half of the 1,100 parents surveyed failed to identify Noah’s Ark as a story
from the Bible. More than one-third thought a Harry Potter plotline was or
might have come from the Bible.
The Bible Society published the research to mark
the launch of its “Pass It On” campaign, which aims to encourage parents to
keep the Bible alive by passing its stories on to their children.
In a foreword to the report, Richard Chartres,
the Anglican bishop of London, said sharing Bible stories “is as vital now as
it has ever been.” He added: “There is work to be done.”
