Last year, Americans bought 19 million Bibles. Whether the contents still mean anything to the people buying them is an open question. The trajectory of Christian belief in America isn’t. It’s falling, and no amount of enthusiasm from commentators like Matt Walsh about a Gen Z awakening has interrupted the descent.
Gallup has tracked American religiosity for decades; the trend is unmistakable. Church membership, which sat at 70 percent in 1999, fell below 50 percent for the first time in 2021. Weekly attendance keeps dropping. Younger Americans are leaving organized religion at a rate that should terrify every pastor with a mortgage on his megachurch. Yet Bible sales are at a two-decade high.
The explanation is simple. Americans aren't buying Bibles because they've rediscovered Scripture, but because someone figured out how to sell them as luxury goods. And luxury goods sell magnificently in a country that has confused acquisition with devotion since roughly the 1820s, when the market revolution and the Second Great Awakening arrived more or less simultaneously. Americans have always been extraordinarily good at turning belief into a product. The genius of the current moment is that they’ve learned to sell the product to many people who’ve already set aside the belief.
The commercialization of American Christianity is old, persistent and well-funded. Charles Finney, the 19th-century revivalist, pioneered the "new measures"—theatrical staging, emotional manipulation, repeat performances—that turned salvation into a circus. Dwight Moody followed, working closely with department store magnate John Wanamaker, who funded his campaigns and understood that a crowd gathered for Jesus was primed to spend. Billy Sunday, the early 20th-century evangelist, ran his crusades like Broadway productions, with advance men, press agents, and tiered seating. Billy Graham sold out stadiums. Jim Bakker sold timeshares. Joel Osteen sells hope in hardcover; each book essentially the same book, each selling extremely well.
Every generation produces a new genus of the same species: the man who takes something people desperately want to believe in and finds the price point.
Trump grasped this with characteristic bluntness. His $60 "God Bless the USA" Bible bundled the King James Version with the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and a handwritten chorus from Lee Greenwood. It was the spiritual equivalent of a gas station sushi platter, and it moved units. Critics laughed. The laughing stopped when the sales figures came in. Trump hadn't invented anything new. He'd just removed the pretense of subtlety that the publishing industry prefers to maintain.
Crossway Books now sells an "heirloom" English Standard Version for $350. Humble Lamb, a Kentucky-based publisher, moved $2.7 million worth of Bibles last year, each one priced between $220 and $250, which is a remarkable sum for a book you can download for free. Word on Fire, a Catholic outfit, is producing a seven-volume Bible it calls "a cathedral in print," each leather-bound volume priced at nearly $100. Over half a million copies sold, according to their own count.
The buyers, publishers cheerfully admit, are mostly men. Evangelical men, specifically, who already own multiple Bibles and are adding to the collection. This is less a portrait of spiritual hunger than one of hobbyists with good incomes and a theologically acceptable version of sneaker collecting.
None of this would matter much if belief were holding steady. When people have genuine faith, they buy religious objects, and that transaction can be innocent enough. The problem is the inverse relationship playing out. As the country grows less religious, the Bible business grows more profitable. Publishers aren’t responding to a spiritual awakening. In reality, they’re monetizing a spiritual nostalgia, which is considerably more cynical.
What's being sold is the feeling of faith rather than faith itself. A $300 Bible with French-milled paper and Italian calfskin doesn't bring you closer to God. It brings you closer to the idea of being the kind of person who is close to God. The object substitutes for the practice. The shelf photograph serves as a substitute for the prayer. The annotation, posted online for strangers, substitutes for the private reckoning that Scripture, at its most demanding, requires.
American Christianity has always had a weakness for the golden calf. The calf comes beautifully bound now, with free shipping on orders over $150, and a five-star rating on a website that also sells tactical gear.