The Invisible Bestseller: Searching for the Bible in America by Kenneth A. Briggs (review)

Millions of Bibles are sold in America every year and it has been the best-selling book in this country since its founding. It is a core text that has shaped American history and life, yet it is a contentious book, and the fact is that perhaps the vast majority of those who buy these Bibles really do not know much about the book. There is not even anything approaching a national consensus about how to understand the Bible, how to read and interpret it, and how it should (or should not) be applied to our common life together. Yet for millions of Americans this is a precious and holy book, a guide to personal existence, and a means of connection with God.

To attempt to sort all this out, Kenneth Briggs has taken a journey across America to investigate the ways in which Americans understand and use all those Bibles that they buy every year. Briggs is a journalist specializing in Religion (Newsday and The New York Times) and also teaches religion and journalism, so he brings a journalist’s appreciation for the personal narrative to this research by talking to individuals about how the Bible operates in their lives. The result is a fascinating collage of stories, stretching from born-again biblical literalists to the academic scholars of the Jesus Seminar, from parish pastors to the heads of major Bible societies and publishers. It is often said that although Americans own many Bibles, they do not always read them, often because they are not sure of how to read and understand this iconic and confusing book. These attitudes are well documented in those with whom Brigg converses.

The story of religion in modern America is all too often told in binary form, as if it is simply about religion versus unbelief, or the growing religious divide between older believers and younger generations moving into secularism. Brigg’s perceptive observations and analysis suggest that such dualisms are simply inadequate to understand the role of religion in the lives of Americans. His initial chapter strongly suggests that much of the polling about religion in America is misleading at best. Many of those who claim the Bible really do not know or understand much about it, and those on the secular side of the divide are more curious about religion and the Bible than might be supposed. Biblical narratives and language are deeply embedded in our national life, even if these references often go unrecognized. In short, the situation is complex.

Subsequent chapters give ever more nuanced and complex pictures of the place of the Bible in contemporary American life. One chapter examines the growing divide between those who want a more robust presence of the Bible in American public life, and those who, with equal passion, want it removed. Another chapter looks at those religious and commercial interests who seek to distribute or market the Bible, and their worried attempts to keep this market viable and bring about a rise in biblical literacy. A chapter examines Fundamentalism and the history of the Scopes “Monkey” trial in Dayton, Tennessee. Another chapter considers the impact of digital Bibles and other similar vehicles in cyber-space, and a further chapter surveys attempts to portray the Bible in various media forms (movies, TV, and others). Attempts to teach and understand the Bible are viewed through lenses as varied as the Society of Biblical Literature, the Jesus Seminar, and selected Christian megachurches. Perhaps the best of this book comes when Briggs simply talks to representative individuals about how they attempt to read and live out the Bible in their lives, narratives which truly demolish the usual binary narratives often suggested.

Sometimes scholars sneeringly dismiss work that they find shallow by referring to it as “journalistic,” a charge that is often unfair and elitist. This is journalistic writing about religion at its very best. Briggs has a wonderful eye for personal narrative as well as the...