That warning comes from Thomas Schirrmacher, the newly elected secretary-general of the World Evangelical Alliance.
Schirrmacher told The Christian Post – “Our biggest problem is that Bible knowledge is fading away. This is the utmost problem we have beyond all theological differences, financial problems, and political questions.”
Schirrmacher, who studied theology in Switzerland and the United States, and serves as the WEA’s Associate Secretary General for Theological Concerns, said that in the Western world “more and more kids that come from evangelical families are not really rooted in the Bible, and many of them leave the faith.“
The number of young people leaving the faith in Western countries is “counteracted” by people becoming Christians as young adults in other parts of the world, according to Schirrmacher.
However, these young Christians also lack deep biblical knowledge and “only know about the Bible what they learned from their conversion”. In rural areas, young Christians are often tasked with leading large churches despite their lack of biblical and theological knowledge.
According to the State of the Bible 2020 report released by the Barna Group and the American Bible Society, U.S. adults who say they read the Bible daily dropped from 14% to 9% between early 2019 and 2020.