Study Shows: The More You Read the Bible, the More Liberal You Become

Even if you're an ardant Biblical literalist, turns out that if you increase your frequency of reading the Bible, you just might start drifting towards liberalism.

Over a decade ago, research out of Baylor University (in Waco, TX) revealed something that shocked many conservative Christians, but made liberal Christians just be like, “Yeah… that checks out.”

According to author Aaron Franzen, while being a Biblical literalist tends to correlate with more conservative political leanings, when you take in to account the frequency of how often some reads their Bible, you begin to see movement toward more left-leaning polices and ideas in a few key areas.

In Franzen’s words,

“Biblical literalism tends to predict conservative religious identities and political attitudes, while actually reading the Bible can conversely indicate more liberal political attitudes and religious identities.”

To be clear, it’s not across the board that a person becomes more politically liberal the more the read the Bible. Generally speaking, we see a tight connection between “conservative religious views” with “conservative political views” (especially among Evangelicals). And for the most part, the more literally a person believes the Bible should be interpreted, the more conservative their political leanings become.

However, the researchers did find a surprising divergence of “Biblical literalist” with “frequent reader” in several specific areas, specifically areas that would move a person toward the more liberal end of the spectrum. They found that the more often a person reads their Bible: