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Morning Reflection in the Season of Pentecost
October 8, 2025
Reflection: Jo Ann B. Jones
“More than three hundred years after the reading revolution ushered in a new era of human knowledge, books are dying”: Arts and Letters, September 19, 2025
How very interesting that a bloodless and peaceful revolution of the eighteenth century, a groundswell in numbers of people who read, has come to an end. A number of studies now indicate that reading for pleasure in the United States has declined by forty per cent. In a report from The National Literacy Trust it is noted that children’s reading is now at its lowest level. To what do we attribute this decline? It is right at hand for most of us: the smartphone, which was widely adopted in developed countries in the mid-2010s. Those years will be remembered as a watershed in human history.
Prior to its introduction to the public, entertainment technologies like cinema or television were intended to capture their audience’s attention for a period. By contrast, the smartphone demands one’s entire life. Phones are designed to be hyper-addictive, hooking users on a diet of innumerable notifications, short videos and social media bait. So omnipresent is this form of technology that the average person now spends seven hours a day staring at a screen. For Generation Z the figure is nine hours. A recent article in The Times found that on average modern students are destined to spend 25 years of their waking lives scrolling on screens.
I fear for what this bodes for the Church and for one’s appreciation for the Bible and the liturgy. Our worship is entirely driven by words and the Bible. Knowledge of the words and reading of the Bible completely inform the development of our faith, our participation in and greater understanding of both the liturgy and the Bible.
Several years ago Redeemer offered a course in the evening for lectors and those who wished to become lectors and/or to be better prepared for the readings each Sunday. What was revealed in those sessions was that few people read the Bible in order to prepare for the reading or read the Bible at all. No wonder the language, the names, the actions, the history of the time will seem foreign. Few will take those steps back into a time many centuries ago, to people and places far different from the twenty-first century. Only the immediate will be important, with little or no appreciation for what preceded and served in some cases as a foundation.
This gives rise to the question: what will endure? What will serve as a foundation? How many will adhere to such a foundation? What will be true? In whom or what will one trust? For what will one hope? To whom will one belong?
I think what I fear most is that hopelessness and a certain type of lawlessness will overtake humankind because of the loss of language that points to a God who loves us so much that God will redeem us. What follows is a sense of anomie. I am also aware that some cycles can repeat and there may well be a return to reading and rediscovery of literature and even the Bible. And some will take great pleasure, comfort and joy in their return to the Bible and to liturgy.
Prayer For Knowledge of God’s Creation
Almighty and everlasting God, you made the universe with all its marvelous order, its atoms, worlds, and galaxies, and the infinite complexity of living creatures: Grant that, as we probe the mysteries of your creation, we may come to know you more truly and more surely fulfill our role in your eternal purpose, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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