Godless America
http://nation.time.com/2014/01/22/godless-cities-in-america/
This particular link to an article about the study on “Bible Mindedness” from Time magazine was specifically chosen to highlight a really nasty choice these editors made. By calling the cities selected as being the least Biblically minded as “godless” is a spectacular dig against all forms of Christianity that weren't among a set of Protestant cults developed in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries.
From the article: “The study defines “Bible-mindedness” as a combination of how often respondents read the Bible and how accurate they think the Bible is.”
Both the act of obsessive re-reading of a book, and the belief that the book is literally true and without flaw, are particular manifestations of Protestantism in general, and more particularly in US forms of Protestantism, like Baptist, Adventist, and independent “Bible” churches. These forms of Christianity require the Bible to be their source of authority, as they reject all other aspects of the faith as Catholic window dressing.
Catholics respect the Bible and they certainly know the Bible, but they don't need the Bible. They have the Pope and the traditions of the Church to guide them. They have Saints, they have theatrics, they have a feast or a festival on every day of the year. The ancient city of Rome has been the (nearly continuous) home of the leader of the Church, the pontifex rex since the 2nd century. Their church is so old, even their mythology has a mythology. The Bible is an important pillar of the Church, but it's not the only one for Catholics.
But Protestants reject the Catholic Church. They claim the Catholics are doing it “wrong”. They reject the authority of the Pope, the value of the traditions, and most especially, the paganism of the festivals. The piety of these various Protestant cults was measured by the degree to which they stripped away the joy and pleasure from their practice of faith. Without a history, a leader, or an ancient location to worship, the only thing Protestants had left was the Bible.
Pretty much ever since there has been a Bible, people have jockeyed for the authority to interpret it. When Protestants reject the Pope, part of what they are rejecting is the notion that only the Pope has the authority to interpret the Bible. Baptists, for example, take pride in their tradition that every person has the authority to interpret the Bible for themselves.
The problem is that the Bible wasn't written for the common layman. It wasn't supposed to be a form of casual divination or a catch-all source of authority. It wasn't even originally intended to be in English (primarily as that language hadn't yet been invented at the time). The stories in the Bible were written many centuries ago, about lands and peoples long ago and far away, in languages that are no longer spoken. It is inadequate to state merely that the context for these tales is difficult to comprehend, as the scale of that difficulty is itself difficult to comprehend. The idea that anyone could randomly read a sentence or two from the middle of any book and get something theologically meaningful and valid without years of prior study is the apex of foolishness.
This study by the American Bible Society is much less a measure of the relative religious correctness claimed by the various participants, then a PR campaign by Protestant Bible worshipers to legitimize their one-dimensional theology. What does it really show? Well educated, professional types that tend to vote Democratic and entertain progressive ideals don't spend much time with the Bible, while poorly educated, blue-collar worker types that tend to conservative, Republican ideals only have the Bible. What this has to do with how well we treat each other isn't obvious to me.