Slowing down to read

Bible reading used to be a regular part of our lives, both private and public, and not simply because we all used to go to church more regularly. In a recent phone survey of 13,000 adults, 93 percent of Americans said that they have a Bible at home. In colonial America, this percentage would have been about 99 percent. A Bible was very often the only book to be found in a home, and it was in every home. Also in that recent phone survey, 75 percent of those with a Bible responded that they’ve read at least one passage from it in the last year. In another survey, conducted by Gallup, the number of those who said that they read their Bible “occasionally” was 59 percent, and this compared to 73 percent in the 1980s.
One obstacle to reading and hearing the Bible today is, as it is for poetry, the slowness that it requires. Our time and attention is splintered in ways that Benjamin Franklin never could have imagined possible. As a result, few of us practice the discipline of reading slowly, and the KJV demands the slowest, most careful reading of any translation. Along with classic poetry and certain types of music, appreciating the language of the Bible has almost become a lost art. I wish that Christian parents would still teach their children how to read, and how to read in a way that savors and contemplates the language.