BELIEF in the Bible hit a 35-year low in the United States in May 2008 when unemployment was at the relatively low level of 5.4 percent, but has begun to rebound over the past three years as unemployment has climbed to over 9 percent, according to separate streams of data published by the Gallup poll and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The simultaneous increase in the unemployment rate and belief in the Bible may be wholly coincidentally–yet, no matter what caused their change of heart, a smaller percentage of Americans today reject the divine origin of the Bible than did in the spring of 2008.
In May 2008, unemployment was at 5.4 percent–lower than it has been in most months over the past 35 years. But belief in the Bible that month hit a 35-year low in the Gallup poll, with a record 22 percent of Americans telling Gallup they believed the Bible was an “ancient book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man.”
In the same May 2008 poll, only a combined 76 percent of Americans told Gallup they believed the Bible was either the “actual word of God” to be “taken literally, word for word” or the “inspired word of God” but not necessarily to be taken literally word for word. That 76 percent matched the all-time low in Gallup’s polling for the combined percentage of Americans who said they believed in the Bible in one of the two ways prescribed in Gallup’s survey question.
The one other time in the last 35 years—the span of time Gallup has been polling on this question–that belief in the Bible dropped to 76 percent was in February 2001. In that month, unemployment was at a very low 4.2 percent.
This May—three years after Bible belief hit its all-time low and skepticism its all-time high in Gallup polling, and with unemployment having climbed to 9.1 percent—a combined 79 percent of Americans told Gallup they believe the Bible was the actual or inspired word of God, while only 17 percent said it was a book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man.
Between Gallup’s May 2008 and May 2011 polls, disbelief in the Bible had declined by 5 points (22 percent to 17 percent), while unemployment, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, had climbed 3.7 points (5.4 percent to 9.1 percent). The maximum margin of error in Gallup’s poll on the Bible, Gallup says, is plus-or-minus 4 points. So the 5-point decline in disbelief in the Bible that the poll has shown over the last three years is larger than the poll’s margin of error.
The February 2001 poll, which like the May 2008 poll showed belief in the Bible at a low of 76 percent, was conducted about seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Source: CNS News
