Half of U.S. adults, teens read a Christian book in the past year, Barna finds

Close to half of American adults and teenagers say they have read at least one Christian book in the last year, Barna Research Group reports.

Forty-nine percent of adults and 51 percent of teens said they had read Christian books other than the Bible in the last 12 months. Similar percentages exist among book buyers. Fifty percent of adult book buyers and 44 percent of teen purchasers said they had bought at least one Christian book in the last year.

The look at book purchases found that Protestant senior pastors are big book buyers. Almost all surveyed- 98 percent- said they had bought at least one book in the past year. One of every five pastors surveyed – 19 percent- purchased 50 or more titles in that time period.

The research was based on three nationwide telephone surveys, including those of 1,005 adults, 604 teenagers and 602 Protestant pastors. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the adult survey and plus or minus 4 percentage points for the other two.

(RNS)