How Can Disciples Walk Faithfully in a Postliterate Era?

In a scene that horrified me in fifth grade, the protagonist of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine wanders through ruins of a museum and realizes the brown and charred rags hanging throughout a gallery are “the decaying vestiges of books.” Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 envisions an oppressive government that systematically burns books to squash critical thinking and independence. Even more unsettling, the government in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World electrically shocks infants to condition them against reading and keeps the Bible under lock and key, because “civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness” over God.

All these plotlines portray the haunting image of a world without reading—a world devoid of knowledge, virtue, and deep thought; awash in corruption; groaning for a sliver of truth and goodness; and divorced from worship of the One who made heaven and earth.

According to Rose Horowitch, journalist at The Atlantic, such chilling scenes are threatening to creep out of science-fiction stories and into our homes and schools. In her provocatively titled article “The End of Reading Is Here,” she issues a dire warning: If we don’t safeguard our culture of literacy, “the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.”

Is reading really on the verge of extinction? What do Christians stand to lose in a world that prizes short-form videos over the printed word—and how can we walk faithfully? I spoke with several Christian experts in literature and technology who shared their hopes and fears for a postliterate society.

What Does Postliterate Mean?

Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan popularized the term “post-literate” in his 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy, in which he predicted electronic and visual media would eventually supplant the written word. But in some regards, we now read more than ever before.

With handheld computers in our pockets 24/7, we’re inundated with texts, emails, and notifications. Yet such reading occurs in short spurts, without depth and sustained attention. Brad East, associate professor of theology at Abilene Christian University and author of the forthcoming book The Screen-Free Church, describes it this way: “Reading takes place in 5–15 second chunks of time on a glowing device, before the next image or swipe or alert restarts the clock.”

Reading occurs in short spurts, without depth and sustained attention.

The time spent scrolling has depleted out our bandwidth for actual books. “This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information,” Horowitch writes. She cites a plethora of research from the last 15 years showing declines in literacy skills and reading rates across the country.

1. Americans aren’t reading books.

Multiple studies show that only about half of people in the United States are reading any books, whether print, electronic, or audio. Reading rates are at an all-time low since Gallup started measuring in 1990, as are the numbers of Americans who cite reading as their favorite activity (only 6 percent). Studies in both adults and children show that far fewer of us read for pleasure on a daily basis.

2. Literacy has declined.

Reading test scores across grade levels and in the majority of school districts have steadily declined since 2013, prompting some experts to declare the United States in a “reading recession.” The causes are likely multifactorial, with a de-emphasis on testing, a rise in social media engagement, and widespread use of the now-discredited balanced literacy curricula all implicated. Whatever the causes, students in America are struggling to read.

3. Schools assign fewer books.

As literacy has declined, teachers have required students to read fewer books. High-school English classes assign only one to two books every year, down from four in 2009. Passages, excerpts, and summaries have replaced full texts.

Meanwhile, nearly all surveyed teachers say their schools provide devices for students to use in class—and three-fourths say such devices distract from student learning and engagement. College professors increasingly report that students arrive on campus unable to complete assignments; to address the dilemma, some universities now recommend students skim texts rather than read them in depth.

4. Students don’t critically read.

As we replace critical reading with sound bites, we degrade our abilities to comprehend, analyze, and reason. In one study, almost 60 percent of college English majors couldn’t interpret the opening paragraphs of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House. Such findings echo neurocognitive research showing digital media trains our minds to process information superficially and forget it easily.

“Digital media’s preference for the visual, the quick, and the shallow should only complement, not replace, the deep, immersive, slow experience of reading,” warns Karen Swallow Prior, Karlson scholar at Bethel Seminary and author of On Reading Well.

Is Reading Really Dead?

Not everyone believes this data signals a death knell for reading. Joel Miller, writer and former vice president of editorial at Thomas Nelson, cautions against romanticizing our literary past.

Although Horowitch cites Doctor Zhivago as a favorite read among Americans in the 1950s, Miller notes that according to sales figures, the average reader in that decade “was mostly thumbing their way through dime-store pulps.” David Wallace-Wells at the New York Times also cautions against hyperbole, noting many reading studies suffer from recall bias, small sample sizes, and overblown results.

As we replace critical reading with sound bites, we degrade our abilities to comprehend, analyze, and reason.

And yet, even skeptics find the overall trends concerning. “Any decline in reading for pleasure should give pause to anyone who cares about . . . reading for the life of the mind and heart,” Miller says.

East agrees.

“For all the tone-policing about moral panics, I’ve not yet actually met anyone who denies these declines when they are appropriately and sufficiently qualified, nuanced, and defined,” he says. “I take it as given that all Americans today, but especially children, teens, and young adults, read less overall than they once did in previous generations, read less complex and shorter texts than they once did, and have far shorter attention spans” (emphasis original).

Hunger for Truth

While we may not teeter on the verge of a reading apocalypse, the trends warrant our attention—especially given the high stakes. Reading’s benefits stretch into every avenue of life and learning: comprehension, vocabulary, reasoning, imagination, creativity, moral judgment, and empathy.

Mental health gains also abound, with reduced stress, anxiety, and depression; better sleep; preserved cognition as we age; and increased longevity. Most important of all, reading shapes our thought patterns and values, enriching our spiritual formation. In the words of Leland Ryken, professor emeritus of English at Wheaton College and author of Recovering the Lost Art of Reading, “The written word has provided food for the mind, soul, imagination, and emotions.”

Tony Reinke, senior teacher at Desiring God and author of multiple books on technology, uses this same language of nourishment when thinking about the influence of books.

“The loftiest of all possible themes—joy, hope, beauty, luminescence, majesty, and glory—all these can pierce through the banality of life and feed our minds and hearts through epic fiction,” he says. “The human soul is hungry for transcendental truths.”

Nourishment in such transcendental truths matters—and therefore, books matter—because God cares how we cultivate our thought life. Paul advises us to set our minds “on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth” (Col. 3:2). When we devote our lives to Christ, we’re to put off the old self (Eph. 4:22–24) and “be transformed by the renewal” of our minds (Rom. 12:2). We’re to meditate on God’s law day and night (Josh. 1:8; Ps. 1:2) and to fill our minds with whatever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, and excellent (Phil. 4:8).

Such stewardship of our thoughts doesn’t occur in sound bites but rather through slow pondering, inquiry, and analysis. When we forgo reading, therefore, we have much to lose spiritually.

“In addition to attention, reading may be a spiritual practice because it forms in the reader humility, generosity, patience, perseverance, and so many other virtues,” writes Jessica Hooten Wilson, Fletcher Jones chair of Great Books at Pepperdine University and author of Reading for the Love of God. “To listen to an author rather than yourself for so many pages increases your humility. It decenters the self.”

Reinke worries about the direction of society should the influence of books continue to decline.

“Sustained literacy is a metric that shows how well a culture thinks deeply,” he says. “When this disappears . . . we are left as people fed sound bites of self-reinforcing opinions to confirm our presumptions, which is incredibly dangerous.”

Wilson also foresees societal dangers:

Our collective memory is preserved in texts, so we will lose our inheritance of wisdom. We will have governments that are farcical and performative rather than wise; we will have films that cater to our contemporary wants rather than appeal to our higher nature; we will have schools that lower the requirements until they are basically a factory for substance-less influencers.

In light of such possible ramifications, suddenly the dystopian novels seem less far-fetched. If we surrender our hold on reading, we risk choosing “machinery and medicine and happiness” over virtue, truth, and their Author.

People of the Word

As people of the Word, Christians have a special stake in the fate of reading.

“God creates with words, including humans in his image as word-makers,” Wilson says. “Jesus Christ is called ‘the Word,’ and the church has historically been a people of the book even before Gutenberg. So how is Christianity to thrive without words?”

History teaches that Christianity is bound to the written word. The early church used the codex to spread the gospel throughout the Roman Empire long before other communities adopted it. During the Middle Ages, monasteries preserved and copied the Scriptures when no one else could read. The Protestant Reformation, which emphasized the need for all believers to study the Bible, was closely connected to the advent of the printing press.

“All through the late classical period, through the Middle Ages, and into the modern era, Christians have nurtured literacy and study,” Miller says. “This stuff is in our blood.”

The importance of literacy to the Christian life makes sense when we consider God’s chosen mode of revelation: his inspired Word. To know God is to study the Bible; general literacy and biblical literacy are tightly intertwined.

As people of the Word, Christians have a special stake in the fate of reading.

“The Bible is the longest, oldest, most complex book most people will try to read cover to cover,” Reinke says. “Any degradation of literacy directly impacts . . . the patience and diligence needed to read the storyline of Scripture.” Lest some argue the early church flourished before widespread literacy, consider whether people busy with swipes or tweets could recite books from memory as the ancients did. As we lack the oral disciplines that preserved texts millennia ago, declining literacy threatens our comprehension of God’s Word.

Ryken witnessed this phenomenon firsthand in college classrooms, where students lacked sufficient background in Scripture to interpret the biblical references in John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Any biblical knowledge “has been pushed out of their minds by the influx of data and ephemera from their smartphones,” Ryken says. “A robber is in our midst in the form of the digital revolution.”

With the robber now invading every household and moment, it’s easy to despair. And yet, the One in whom we place our hope has already overcome the world (John 16:33). How do we walk faithfully in this landscape, all the while setting our gaze on him?

Courage to Be Countercultural

“We need to have not simply the courage but also the enlightened self-interest to be countercultural,” Ryken says. The professionals interviewed for this article offered the following suggestions for how Christians might safeguard reading for minds and hearts.

1. Take up and read.

A culture of reading starts in the home, with our own daily habits. When we prioritize reading for ourselves, the practice takes root and overflows to others.

“Build the home around books with some intention,” Miller recommends. “Nothing’s wrong with television, video games, or even smartphones. But when those things crowd books out, we lose the chance to inspire a love of reading. Keeping books near the center is an easy choice.”

To maintain that center, Wilson recommends cultivating discrete routines.

“Read a book with your spouse at least once a year. Start book clubs with friends. Read aloud passages from Scripture at your churches rather than [putting them] on PowerPoints,” she suggests. “Just as the ancient Christians practiced spiritual [disciplines] to avoid the traps of the cultures around them, be weird in your time and place—which for twenty-first century Christians means reading and writing.”

As Wilson insinuates, such discipline also spills over into how we write. As tantalizing as AI appears, its cobbling together of words can’t replace the reflection, reasoning, and artistry of human writing. God created us in his image (Gen. 1:26); he designed us to create for faithful stewardship and out of love for him.

2. Teach them diligently.

We can nurture a love for books among the young people in our lives.

“Anyone troubled by these trends can begin addressing them tonight, out loud, sitting on the sofa or at the side of a bed,” Miller says. “It starts with reading to your kids.”

Wilson agrees. “Read books as a family aloud. Make libraries destinations as often as parks.”

She also encourages families to advocate for their children’s education. “Encourage your school to assign reading. Choose schools that avoid technology and prioritize texts. Give money to Christian classical schools and Christian liberal arts universities—put your money where your heart is!”

Even teachers can help turn the tide.

“My students for the most part enter my classroom effectively non-literate, but they don’t remain that way,” East says. “Many younger people are hungry for the kinds of habits they’ve not ‘caught’ or even been taught, and parents, pastors, teachers, and friends can find ways to facilitate [them], however ‘belated’ in time” (emphasis original).

Moses called the Israelites to teach their children God’s Word when they rose, and when they walked in the way, and when they lay down to sleep (Deut. 6:6–7). When we engage young people in the written word, we guide them toward an understanding of God’s inspired Word.

3. Practice digital stewardship.

With devices now ubiquitous, we may be tempted to incorporate digital media into our church services. But what better way to preserve literacy than to make church a haven for it?

“Now that research shows the effects of the electronic and digital revolution, we need to heed the wake-up call,” Ryken asserts. “As changes in technology take root in our society, we need to monitor them carefully and not mindlessly adopt them.”

“Avoid the temptation of the screens,” Wilson adds. “Christians have to be in the world, but not of it. You may have to be in a postliterate/digital world, but don’t be of it.”

To live out this call, East says, “churches and pastors should not be contributing to the problem.” He advises against screens in the sanctuary, videos in the liturgy, and phones during services.

“Don’t encourage people to follow the church on social media,” he advises pastors. “Don’t create viral sermon clips. Don’t be one more ‘content creator.’ Stay local. Stay analog. Stay embodied. Stay in the lane of the church’s mission: proclamation of the gospel in Word and sacrament to God’s people and to the world.”

4. Proclaim the Word.

Declining reading habits make instruction on Sunday morning all the more critical.

“What people need now that churches can offer more than any other place is deep reading practice and experience,” Prior argues. “This can be done not only in worship services but also through book studies that lead readers through quality, literary texts.”

In addition to offering practice in deep reading, services saturated in Scripture are more crucial than ever for biblical literacy.

Church services saturated in Scripture are more crucial than ever for biblical literacy.

“If our young people are coming to church on Sunday, then we should see that time as our one, perhaps our only, opportunity to expose them to the truth and beauty and goodness of Scripture,” East writes. “Worship by definition ought to be drenched in the Word of God through and through.”

Toward that end, Reinke advocates for expository preaching.

“Expositional preaching through the Bible, verse by verse, is a great remedy to decreasing literacy rates,” he says. In contrast with short, motivational messages, “a preacher’s focus on the grammar and logical flow of the Bible, to discover and worship God in his divine glories, is literacy at its most profound use.”

Let’s make the church a sanctuary for deep, rich exposition of God’s Word—and guide members through it week after week.

5. Don’t lose heart.

Even if statistics appear grim, followers of Christ shouldn’t lose heart.

“We need not be afraid of what is coming when it comes to declining reading practices, nor do we have to assimilate,” Wilson says.

Miller echoes her encouragement: “Christians are people of the book. We always have been, and we always will be. The book is a singular technology for reading the human heart.”

Even as books collect dust and devices shatter attention spans, our hope rests in the hands of a sovereign God who gave his Son—the Word made flesh—for us (John 1:14). He spoke the universe into existence with a word (Gen. 1:1–3). His Word is like fire, like a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces (Jer. 23:29). His Word endures forever. And nothing—not the darkness, not ignorance, and not the buzzing phones in our pockets—will ever overcome it.