Two-Thirds of Churchgoers Fail Bible Quiz as Average Score Hits 51

Picture a church full on a Sunday morning, every pew taken, every voice joining the hymns — and then picture two out of every three people in those pews failing a quiz on the book they came to hear. That is what Lifeway Research found when it tested American churchgoers, and the average score was just 51 out of 100.

Around two-thirds of churchgoers failed a biblical literacy quiz, according to a report released on Tuesday 3 November 2026 by Lifeway Research, the Christian Post reports. Lifeway's own newsroom confirms the headline finding: the average respondent scored 51, and around 2 in 3 earned an F, below 60.

The survey covered 2,012 Americans who identify as Protestant, nondenominational, Catholic or Orthodox Christian and attend church in a typical month, the Christian Post reports. It was conducted online from 12 to 29 August 2026, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2% at the 95% confidence level.

Respondents answered dozens of questions across eight seperate categories, the Christian Post reports, including people of the Bible, the order of biblical events, and which books belong in Scripture. The quiz was graded like a school test: A for 90 and above, B for 80 to 89, C for 70 to 79, D for 60 to 69, and F for below 60.

The Grades Behind the Headline

The full spread of grades makes the headline harder to soften. According to the Christian Post's report of the findings, 65% earned an F, 9% a D, 9% a C, 8% a B, and 9% an A.

Some basics tripped people up in ways that will surprise regular churchgoers. While 94% knew Moses received the Ten Commandments, the Christian Post reports, only 45% correctly named Saul as Israel's first king, and two-thirds wrongly identified Hezekiah as a book of the Bible.

The pattern behind the scores was strikingly simple: the more people read the Bible, the better they did. Respondents who read their Bible every day averaged 66, the Christian Post reports, those who read it once a week averaged 50, and those who rarely or never read it averaged 36.

Lifeway Research Executive Director Scott McConnell put the lesson plainly, as quoted by the Christian Post: “Bible literacy comes with both reading and studying the Bible — digging to understand each passage but also moving throughout the Bible regularly to aid in remembering it.”

Reading the Book, Not Just Hearing About It

McConnell added a second point that goes beyond study habits, the Christian Post reports. “Knowing the Bible involves the heart, mind and emotions,” he said, adding that Bible literacy is shaped by a motivation to be in relationship with God and a desire to be encouraged by the Word.

Author and Bible teacher Jen Wilkin, writing for The Gospel Coalition, gave the finding a sharper edge, as quoted by the Christian Post. She wrote that the report showed “Christians have succumbed to the general literacy crisis of the culture.”

Wilkin added, in the Christian Post's quotation: “The Bible itself, the classic of all classics, has apparently become a book that every Christian wants to have read, and few Christians want to read.” She argued that many Christians now consume sermons, podcasts and devotional resources that cherry-pick verses, while becoming, in her words, “curators of other people's opinions about a book we don't read ourselves.”

Readers who want a more hopeful Bible-reading story can look at Latest: Global Bible Month 2026 Times Square Launch as 2.2 Million Sign Up for 30-Day Bible Challenge. A personal faith journey through hardship is told in Chase Rice Says I Want to Choose Jesus After Trauma Loss and Shame, and a singer's answered-prayer story is in Hannah Harper Thanks God for Answered Prayers One Year After American Idol Audition.

Not the First Warning of Its Kind

This is not the first report to note biblical illiteracy among churchgoers, the Christian Post notes. In 2019, Pew Research Center released a report on what Americans knew about religion, and its findings were just as awkward.

Among Pew's findings, the Christian Post reports, 34% of self-identified Evangelicals did not know that Jesus was from Nazareth. A further 31% did not know that Jesus had delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and 25% thought that the Golden Rule was one of the Ten Commandments.

Seven years on, the Lifeway numbers suggest the gap has not closed. The difference now is that the new survey points to a clear lever: daily reading lifted the average by 30 points over rare or never reading, from 36 to 66.

That gap is the story inside the headline, and it leaves every reader with a personal question rather than a statistic. The quiz did not ask people whether they owned a Bible, or loved their church, or could sing the hymns from memory.

It asked whether they knew the book itself — and the next survey, whenever it comes, will ask the same question again.

But the most surprising part of this story is yet to come — keep reading.