The results of a 2013 poll are striking: 28 percent of Americans did not read a single book last year. When asked if they had read a work of fiction in the past 12 months, 41 percent said no. Almost identical numbers (42 percent) said they had not finished a work of nonfiction. (The overlap between the two groups provides the 28 percent figure.)
Other polls indicate that that number might be a bit elevated -- but not by much. A Pew and Gallup poll in 2011 found that 19 percent of Americans read no books in the previous year, a more than threefold increase since the question was first asked in 1978.
While the polls offer much that is worthy of reflection (including the ways that gender, race, ethnicity and educational background correlate with reading habits), there is a hidden piece of data that is relevant for leaders. Leaders should take note that, among those who did read books last year, the average American finished just five.
For most of us, I would imagine that number sounds low. To be a leader in the religious world is, almost by default, to be a reader. As leaders of congregations and institutions, we exist in a world created, defined and renewed by texts. They shape our imaginations and our visions. Texts are what orient us within the world and what we bring into conversation with the world. So many of us have a native or learned voraciousness for the written word.
It is not just Scripture or straight-up theology either. A friend serving a rural parish in the south swears that Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Wendell Berry have offered as much instruction for his life in ministry as have Aquinas, Barth and Bonhoeffer. In them, he has friends who have helped him understand his context -- its beauty, its peculiarity, its absurdity, its grace. They have supplemented his reading of the sacred texts of the tradition, enlivened his imagination and emboldened his ministry.
If being a leader in the religious world is to be a reader and interpreter of texts, one of the privileges of leadership is that we also get to recommend texts to those we serve and those we serve alongside. If average Americans read only five books a year, we can help them navigate the shelves of the local bookshop or the online book merchant toward things that are worthy of their time and effort, the kind of books that shape life in healthy and holy ways.
As summer approaches, now is a great time to offer book recommendations to your colleagues and congregations. What should be on their reading list? What do you wish they were reading that they presently aren’t?
