As Morals Decline, More Than Half Americans Wish They Spent More Time Reading Bible

As the world seems to get worse, the majority of Americans agree that the Bible is a source of hope and a force for good.

Those are the findings in the latest State of the Bible survey by the American Bible Society.

The annual survey shows 81 percent of Americans say morals are declining.

"It's at a pretty speedy decline from asking the same question last year," said ABS spokesman Geof Morin in an interview with NE News Now. 

"It increased five percent just from last year," he said.

Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Billy Graham recent toured the country urging Americans to return to God.

"I believe we are perilously close to the moral tipping point for the survival of the United States of America," Graham wrote in a 2016 Decision magazine article. "I refuse to be silent and watch the future of our children and grandchildren be offered up on pagan altars of personal pleasure and immorality."

Graham's sister Anne, echoed his sentiments in her book, "The Daniel Prayer."

"We're in a free fall, morally and spiritually we're imploding in this nation and my concern is we're going to reach a point of no return so that there comes a point the psalmist says that when you seek God he will not be found, that our sin and our iniquities come between us and Him to a point that He won't return to us," Lotz warned.

The ABS study found that only about one in five Americans are actively reading and studying the Bible.

"They're positive about the scriptures," Morin explains, "but they're also actively engaging with the scriptures themselves."

More than half of Americans, 58 percent, believe God's Word should have significance in their lives and wish they read the Bible more.

"But wishing, as you know, doesn't make it so," Morin points out. "They still need to make good choices about engaging with the scriptures."

The report also found that 68 percent of Bible users report turning to the Scriptures because they bring them closer to God.  

Thirty-nine percent of people who increased their Bible enagement did so because of a difficult circumstance in their lives that caused them to seek direction or answers.

Meanwhile Bible skeptics have leveled off according the survey. Nineteen percent of Americans are now considered skeptics, levels last seen in 2014.