| Biblical illiteracy is a major spiritual problem in America today. Beyond the individual costs, churches as well as society in general pay a high price when so many cannot discern between good (what is biblical) and evil. The magnitude and scope of the biblical illiteracy problem has been observed and documented by pastors, Christian educators, and ministry experts. These observations seemed significant. The current decline in Bible literacy in the American church suggested that a closer study of biblical literacy among Southern Baptists was warranted. The precedent literature revealed that little work has been done to examine Bible literacy among adult Southern Baptists. The purpose, therefore, of this research was to examine Bible knowledge among Southern Baptist adult Sunday school participants and to investigate the relationships, if any, that exist between Bible knowledge and length of Sunday school attendance, size of the overall Sunday school, and frequency of Sunday school attendance. The primary goal of this study was to give pastors, Sunday school teachers, Bible-study leaders, elders, and professors insight into the potential sociological and spiritual trends of Southern Baptists. In order to accomplish these stated objectives, the researcher investigated student Bible knowledge using a basic Bible knowledge inventory among randomly selected SBC adult Sunday school participants.;Because the population of interest was spread out over a large area, thereby making normal randomization procedures impractical, a cluster sampling was employed. For the purpose of this research, the "cluster" was the local SBC church. LifeWay Christian Resources in Nashville, Tennessee, provided a list of the 250 randomly selected churches taken from the Annual Church Profile (ACP) database of Southern Baptist Churches. With the aid of the random numbers table, 127 out of the 250 randomly selected churches were chosen arbitrarily to be contacted and assessed using an inclusion criteria. Only sixteen churches, meeting the inclusion criteria, agreed to participate in the study. A total of 1,220 surveys were sent out to the sixteen churches that met the criteria. Twelve of the sixteen churches responded by filling out the surveys and returning them to the researcher. Overall, a total of 516 adult Sunday school participants from these twelve randomly selected "cluster sample" churches chose to complete and return the surveys, resulting in 508 (N=508) usable surveys.;The data from the paper questionnaires was tabulated and downloaded into the software program SAS, where each response was assigned a numerical value. After the data was codified, the first wave of statistical analysis was conducted and summarized. The summary statistic gave descriptive measures of central tendency and variability and allowed the researcher to check the assumptions for normality. Once it was determined that the data did not have a normal distribution (severe skewing to the right), a nonparametric rank test statistic was used. In addition, Pearson's Chi-Square test was employed to see if the independent variables were correlated to one another. The last step was to conduct a regression analysis (coefficient of determination or correlation coefficient) to determine causality. The alpha value required for these tests was at .05 or below for all variables.;In addition to presenting quantitative evidence concerning the level of Bible knowledge among adult Southern Baptist Sunday school participants, this research study draws some specific conclusions about the evidence and gives four explicit recommendations for pastors, church leaders, and Christian educators. |
