Two in Three Churchgoers Failed a Bible Quiz. What Does That Have to Do With Your Marriage?

The news

On Tuesday, November 3, Lifeway Research released a Bible knowledge quiz given to 2,012 American Christians who attend church at least once a month (Protestant, nondenominational, Catholic and Orthodox). Dozens of questions covered people, books, the order of events and well-known verses. The average score was 51 out of 100, and 65% scored below 60. Only 9% reached 90 or higher.

Some details sting: only 45% knew Saul was Israel’s first king; 67% thought “Hezekiah” is a book of the Bible; and just 51% knew that “God helps those who help themselves” is not in Scripture. Churchgoers who read the Bible daily averaged 66; those who rarely or never read it averaged 36. The story was picked up by The Christian Post and The Baptist Paper.

Before I comment, the caveats. This was an online survey of a pre-recruited national panel, fielded August 12–29, 2026, with quotas and weighting (margin of error ±2.2 points). And a memory test doesn’t measure faith, character or love. Some people couldn’t put Israel’s judges in order but live out the Sermon on the Mount better than many scholars. Still, the number is telling us something.

The grade isn’t the problem

I’m not here to shame anyone. Give me that quiz on a bad day and I’d miss a few too. The goal isn’t an A. Jesus told the top Bible experts of His day: “You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39, NIV). You can know everything about the book and still not know Him.

What caught my attention was something else: half of these churchgoers couldn’t tell God’s Word apart from a popular saying. And that’s exactly where many Christian marriages get lost.

Marriages run on slogans

When I sit with couples in crisis, the problem is almost never a lack of information. It’s wrong information, repeated until it sounds true. Here are a few lines I hear all the time, including from people who are in church every Sunday:

• “Follow your heart.” The Bible says the opposite: “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV). A lot of affairs started with someone “following their heart.”
• “God just wants me to be happy.” God wants far more: He wants you to look like Christ. Sometimes that means apologizing first, giving in, serving when no one is watching.
• “A good marriage shouldn’t take work.” Jesus described a house hit by rain, rising streams and wind. It didn’t stand because the storm never came. It stood because it was built on the rock (Matthew 7:24-25).
• “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s the line half the respondents thought was biblical. The gospel is the exact opposite: God helps those who can’t help themselves. I’m proof. I was once the problem in my own marriage, and it wasn’t my willpower that saved us. Vanessa gave God a chance, and trust was rebuilt brick by brick, by grace.

When the Word isn’t in our hearts, the space doesn’t stay empty. It gets filled by TV shows, influencers, a friend’s advice, a life coach. Hosea warned about this long ago: “my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6, NIV). Destroyed. This isn’t about test scores. It’s about houses that fall.

A detail every husband should notice

The survey found that, on average, 56% of respondents’ time with the Bible is alone and 44% is in a group or church setting. Lifeway didn’t ask about couples. But I will: how much of that “group” time happens at home, husband and wife, with the Bible open to the same page?

Paul writes that Christ loved the church “to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word” (Ephesians 5:26, NIV), right after “Husbands, love your wives” (v. 25). Men, I’ll be direct: leading your home spiritually isn’t preaching at your wife. It’s being the first to open the Bible, the first to say “want to read this together?”, the first to admit “I don’t know, let’s find out.”

Lifeway also found that daily readers scored much higher. That’s an association, not proof of cause and effect, but it makes sense: memory is built by habit. So is a marriage.

Three simple steps for this week

1. One chapter a day, together. Start with the Gospel of Mark: 16 short chapters. Read it out loud, one reads, the other listens. Ten minutes.
2. Just one question. After reading, each of you answers: “What does this show me about Jesus?” No theology debate, no keeping score. Just conversation.
3. Swap a slogan for a verse. Pick one line you keep repeating in arguments (“you always…”, “that’s just how I am”) and replace it with a verse. Put it on the fridge.

“Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path” (Psalm 119:105, NIV). A lamp doesn’t show the whole road. It shows the next step. Often that’s all a struggling couple needs.

One last word

If this news made you feel a little embarrassed, I felt it too. But grace doesn’t start with shame; it starts with an invitation. Nobody needs an A to come back to the Word. You just have to open it.

Vanessa Lima and I share practical, Christ-centered help for marriages every week on the O Casal Legendário YouTube channel and on Instagram. Come walk with us.