Interesting Perspecitve on Christian Reading Habits.
“One thing I noticed about Evangelicals is that they do not read. They do not read the Bible, they do not read the great Christian thinkers, they have never heard of Aquinas. If they’re Presbyterian, they’ve never read the founders of Presbyterianism. I do not understand that. As a Jew, that’s confusing to me. The commandment of study is so deep in Judaism that we immerse ourselves in study. God gave us a brain, aren’t we to use it in His service? When I walk into an Evangelical Christian’s home and see a total of 30 books, most of them best-sellers, I do not understand. I have bookcases of Christian books, and I’m a Jew. Why do I have more Christian books than 98 percent of the Christians in America? This is so bizarre to me.”
– Dennis Prager in an interview from The Door magazine.
August 21st, 2007 at 5:59 am
Interesting comment by Prager but I wonder what research suggests. Having belonged to a national church and synagogue library association, my impression is that Evangelicals read more Christian books than do other Christians, including Catholics.
August 21st, 2007 at 9:34 pm
i whole-heartedly agree with Dennis Prager’s sentiments. There is not enough time nor space for me to expound upon how and why and how much I agree………………….
December 25th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
We may well have to move into the shed, as books have taken over the house. At least half of them are Christian books, covering a very broad range of subject, tradition and time periods.
God bless you Mr. Prager. I hope you meet some more intelligent Christians!
Robyn
May 11th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
In general, Evangelicals are superficial. We want the benefits of Christianity without having to study or understand it. That explains why we don’t read much.
In defense of the bookless-brethren, we can’t judge a reader by how many books he owns. For example, many people might give away books they’ve already read or only borrow books in the first place.
In addition, how many of us have libraries overflowing with books, but our lives aren’t overflowing with wisdom?
Application is always more important than intellectual knowledge. It’s what we do with the books that matters.
For the most part, however, I would agree that we could spend a lot more time studying the Bible and Christian literature as well as non-Christian literature.