Christianity Today’s Cover Stories Features American Bible Society’s Work
American Bible Society's team members were interviewed in 2 cover stories of Christianity Today (January-February 2021).
Why There Are So Many ‘Miraculous’ Stories of Bibles Surviving Disaster: When Scripture makes it through flood or fire, we see signs of a faith that endures.
Bible experts appreciate these accounts as signs of how much Christians cling to the Word—and the God it testifies to. Scott Ross of the American Bible Society (ABS) has a favorite survival story, a woman whose Bible and Bible-reading chair survived a tornado that destroyed her house. “That’s a whole different level,” said Ross, the ABS director of church partnerships. “You can’t attribute that to glue or binding or leather.”
COVID-19 Hurts. But the Bible Brings Hope: New study shows Scripture reading correlates with Harvard measures of human flourishing.
In the middle of a global pandemic, a contentious election, and social unrest, the American Bible Society (ABS), with assistance from Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program, found a strong correlation between Scripture reading and hope.
Frequent Bible readers rated themselves 33 points more hopeful than irregular Scripture readers did in two surveys of more than 1,000 people done six months apart. The study also found that people are more hopeful when they read Scripture more frequently.
Christianity Today interviewed American Bible Society's John Plake and Scott Ross for two features—one on ABS research team’s COVID-19 and human flourishing research that was co-published with Harvard researcher Tyler Vanderweele, and one on Bibles that survived disasters. These articles reflect the expansiveness of ABS' work and touched upon ABS' research, provision of Bibles, interest in helping people engage in Scripture, and trauma healing.
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