Bible Readers More Likely to Say They've Found Their Calling in Life: Survey
Americans who read the Bible regularly are more likely to say they have found their calling in life than those who don't read Scripture, according to a new survey exploring how adults from all walks of life view meaning and purpose.
The new data from the American Bible Society's State of the Bible report found that those whom researchers describe as "Scripture engaged" – that is, people who read the Bible regularly and say it has impacted their lives – are significantly more likely to say they have found their calling in life than Americans who never or rarely read Scripture (the "Scripture disengaged").
"People with a strong sense of calling flourish more – and Scripture is at the heart of that connection. Americans who regularly engage with the Bible are also the most confident in their life calling," said John Farquhar Plake, American Bible Society's chief innovation officer and editor-in-chief of the State of the Bible series.
Interestingly, Scripture-disengaged Americans also scored lower than the Scripture-engaged on the question of actively searching for their calling, suggesting, as the report put it, that they "haven't found their calling – and they're not looking for it."
The report's authors noted that Christians often view the word "calling" as a religious concept, but emphasized that it "doesn't have to be." The term also can describe a vocation or career – for example, when someone says, "When that happened, I just knew I had to do this forever."
Indeed, the report found that Americans with paid jobs are more likely than those actively seeking work to say they have found their calling in life.
It also found a positive relationship between education and a sense of calling: The more education a person has, the more likely he or she is to say they have found it. Respondents with bachelor's degrees and postgraduate degrees were more likely than those with less education to say they had found their calling.
Roughly one in five Americans say they do not have a calling in their work (20 percent) or in life overall (16 percent). By contrast, nearly two in five (39 percent) say it is either "totally true" (14 percent) or "mostly true" (25 percent) that they have found their calling in life.
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Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
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Originally published July 10, 2026.
