Bible sales surge: Gen Z is sick and tired of predecessors’ self-centered, godlike hubris

OPINION:

This week, multiple news outlets reported that Bible sales for 2024 in the United States have soared by 22% through October compared with the same period in 2023. So far, approximately 13.7 million Bibles have been sold in the first 10 months of 2024, compared with 14.2 million for the entire previous year.

The increase seems to be disproportionate among Generation Z and, more specifically, among young men. The American Bible Society reports a renewed interest in biblical faith, with 44% of Gen Z adults saying they are curious about Jesus and the Bible and 21% saying they have increased their use of Scripture in the last year.

Many are suggesting that this unexpected attention to Scripture is evidence that today’s youngest generation is starved for meaning and purpose. Others claim that the exploding interest in the “Good Book” is due to heightened anxiety, which seems to come hand in glove with today’s 24-hour news cycle and its socioeconomic, geopolitical agenda. After all, if every time you scroll through your smartphone, you are bombarded with predictions of everything from the end of democracy to the imminent collapse of our entire ecosystem, it’s hard to have an optimistic outlook on life.

But could there be another reason why droves of today’s youth are turning to the Bible? When all else is considered, could the surging interest in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Moses be a reaction to something else? Is it possible that Gen Z is looking to Scripture because they are simply sick and tired of the self-centered, godlike hubris of their predecessors? Could the smug chronological snobbery of millennials and Gen X have finally given way to a refreshing humility in the young people who have had to suffer their arrogance?

Stop and think about it. Today’s kids have been exposed to some of the craziest navel-gazing nonsense one could imagine. For decades, we’ve told them global warming will destroy the planet, only to repeatedly move the date of Armageddon when our climate priests prove to be false prophets.

For years, we’ve lectured them to always follow the science, except when it comes to male and female physiology and biology.

Day in and day out, we’ve harangued them about racism while telling them they’re racists for not focusing on race.

Over and over again, we’ve guilted them into believing that all “dead White European males” are bad and that if you don’t tear down their statues and burn all their books, you’re on the wrong side of history. My land, just last year, a school in Mississauga, Ontario, removed all books from its library published before 2008 because it didn’t want anything “old” and “outdated” influencing their students.

Is it possible that Gen Z recognizes this arrogance for what it is: stupid, foolish, self-serving, hypocritical, morally vacuous rubbish? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, today’s 20- and 30-year-olds are buying Bibles because they might instinctively know that ideas that have stood the test of time for some 2,000 years are likely better than the dumb ideas their teachers and school principal came up with about five minutes ago?

C.S. Lewis addressed all this over 50 years ago when he advocated letting the “breezes of the centuries” blow through our minds every now and then. Lewis said we can do this by “adding old books” to our reading list.

“It’s a good rule after reading a new book,” he said, “never to allow yourself another until you have read an old one in between. … Every age has its own outlook. It is especially good at seeing certain truths and is especially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period.”

Lewis concluded: “None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it and weaken our guard against it if we read only modern books. … The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can only be done by reading old books.”

G.K. Chesterton added that “real development is not leaving things behind, as on a road, but drawing life from them, as from a root.”

Maybe today’s young people are buying more Bibles because they know in their hearts that the way forward is to reach back to the narrow path of Scripture.

Maybe they understand that the chronological snobbery of thinking we know more than Peter, Paul, James and Jude is laughable at best and damnable in the extreme.

Maybe Gen Z has a surging interest in the Bible because they know in their soul that the “clean sea breezes” of God’s Holy Word blowing through their minds is a lot better than the banality of the religion of the rainbow and its alphabet soup of CRT, DEI, BLM and LGBTQ.

• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Daycare: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery).