There is a Huffington Post article which indicates, unsurprisingly, that most Americans say they love the Bible and most Americans read bits of it at most a few times a year. I am guessing that even those who say they read it often do not get to know it in a serious, intellectually as well as spiritually and ethically rigorous way.
One has to ask what “love” means if people say they love a collection of literature that they are largely unfamiliar with. What sort of love would it be if one saw one's beloved a few times a year, even though one could see him or her much more regularly.
And let's not forget that those same people also probably claim that the Bible is “authoritative” for them. Again, what sort of authority are you giving to laws or guidelines if you are not even familiarizing yourself with them? If you are not familiar with them, you aren't following them!
These are the same people who will rush to “defend” the Bible – that is, the Bible they do not read and whose contents as the imagine them to be are largely a figment of their imagination – against those of us who've dedicated our lives to studying those texts, when we try in vain to share some of the fruits of our research and our passion with them.
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