A recent Jeopardy clue caused quite a flap across the country. On a two hundred dollar question, not one of the three contestants knew the Lord’s Prayer well enough to supply the word hallowed as the missing word in “Our Father, which art in heaven, blank be thy name.” This really shouldn’t be surprising since recent surveys show a continuing drop in what is known as Bible engagement, meaning interacting with God’s Word in a meaningful way on a regular basis.
It’s hard to know the Lord’s Prayer if you haven’t heard it or read it. With the Bible largely exiled from public schools since the sixties and with church attendance declining, many Americans aren’t exposed to the Bible, even to passages that have historically been pretty generally known. Not surprisingly, one answer to Biblical illiteracy is families reading and studying the Bible together.
