Nearly one in four adults in the UK think the story of Superman can be found in the Bible, according to new research by Bible Society UK.

When asked to identify storylines that could be found in the Bible, Superman’s plotline, described as “A hero from another planet with super powers on earth saves lives and the world from disaster”, scored highly with parents who thought they could find that story in the Bible. Depending on your definition of Jesus, that definition might be tricky to dismiss. He’s certainly been likened to Superman in the past (check out Colin Buchanan’s ‘Super Saviour’ song!).

But other storylines were also tested, including from The Hunger Games (54% thought this storyline was or might be a Bible story), The Da Vinci Code and Harry Potter, interspersed with real Bible stories including Adam and Eve (“a couple’s lives are ruined when a talking snake persuades them to eat something they were warned to leave alone”), Noah’s Ark and David and Goliath.

The report aims to highlight the current reading habits and preferences of parents and children, and their knowledge of the Bible, and forms part of the Bible Society UK’s ‘Pass It On’ campaign.

The report results are “startling”, says Bible Society, showing that despite the Bible remaining the world’s all-time bestseller which can be found in millions of homes, an increasing number of people don’t actually know what’s inside it.

“We hope [the research] will stimulate debate about the value of reading Bible stories with children,” says James Catford, group chief executive of Bible Society UK.

Bible Society conducted a study of over 800 children (aged 8-15) and 5,000 adults (of whom just over 1,000 were parents) in January this year. When asked to identify which biblical stories they were familiar with, the results show a decline in bible knowledge in the younger generations:

• 23% of children said they had never read, seen or heard Noah’s Ark.
• 25% had never heard the Nativity story
• Over half (54%) said the same for Joseph and his coat of many colours.
• 38% have never seen, read or heard the story of Adam and Eve
• 43% have never seen, read or heard the story of the Crucifixion
• 56% have never engaged in these ways with the story of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea
• 57% had not heard of David or Goliath.

Over 60 per cent had not read, seen or heard of the Feeding of the 5,000, the Creation Story (63 per cent), Daniel in the Lion’s den (72 per cent) or the story of Solomon (85 per cent).

Despite the decline in Bible literacy, the results are showed that 1in 3 (30 per cent) adults thought it was important to read Bible stories to their children, to “pass on” classic stories to future generations.

Bible Society Australia’s CEO Greg Clarke has also weighed in on the state of biblical literacy on our own shores, with his book ‘The Great Bible Swindle’, which argues that the Bible has a foundational place in our history, literature and culture, and that you can’t claim to be educated without at least a basic knowledge of the Bible.

“We have generations of school leavers, and now a generation of teachers, who know next to nothing about the Bible,” he writes, pointing to The Bible Literacy Project in the US and saying we “desperately need something like it here in Australia.”

The Bible Society UK research, said Clarke on Twitter, is just another example of the ‘Bible swindle’ happening all over the world.

Read the full report, here. 

Featured image: Used under CC License, from Flickr/BenNorthern