In a decade when “secularization” has been the default headline, one stubborn counter-signal keeps flashing across the English-speaking world: young people are buying—and actually opening—the Bible again. The shift isn’t uniform everywhere, and it doesn’t always look like the revival imagery of previous eras. But in North America and parts of Europe, publishers, Bible societies, and major survey groups are reporting a measurable rebound in Bible sales and Bible reading, with Millennials and Gen Z often driving the change. [scroll for more:]

In the United States, the sales story has become hard to ignore. Trade reporting based on Circana BookScan data points to 2025 as a modern high-water mark: Bible sales reached a 21-year high, totaling about 19 million units—up 12% from 2024 and roughly double the 2019 level. That follows a strong 2024 as well, when tracking showed a significant year-over-year jump through October while overall print book sales barely moved. Even faith-friendly publications that are careful not to overclaim are describing a sustained “boom” rather than a one-season blip, precisely because the sales growth continues even amid broader churn in religious affiliation and church attendance.

What’s more interesting than the raw unit numbers is who is behind them and what they’re doing with the text. Survey work suggests the reading bump is real, especially among younger adults. Barna reported that weekly Bible reading among U.S. adults rebounded sharply from a 2024 low, and that younger cohorts—Gen Z and Millennials—were leading the recovery. The American Bible Society’s State of the Bible reporting also showed an increase in “Bible Use” between 2024 and 2025 (defined in their work as reading the Bible outside of church at least three times a year), with notable gains among Millennials. Taken together, sales data and survey data point in the same direction: more Bibles are leaving stores and more younger adults are re-engaging Scripture in some habitual way, even if belief and practice remain more mixed than in prior generations.

Canada’s numbers echo the pattern, though they are often tracked through distribution rather than retail purchases. The Canadian Bible Society reported distributing 631,298 Bibles, Testaments, and Scripture selections in 2024, a 20.1% increase over 2023. Distribution isn’t the same as consumer sales—some of these are placed through schools, outreach, prisons, churches, camps, or special programs—but rising distribution at this scale typically reflects demand somewhere in the system. It also fits the broader North American picture: the Bible is turning up again not only as a cultural artifact, but as a book people request, share, and carry.

Across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom has produced some of the most dramatic “headline” figures. Reporting tied to Nielsen BookScan analysis found that UK Bible sales reached a record high in 2025, rising 134% since 2019, with sales value reaching about £6.3 million. The same reporting emphasized something many pastors and booksellers have been saying anecdotally for a while: a noticeable portion of the new interest is coming from younger buyers, including many who weren’t raised in church and don’t arrive with a denominational identity already formed. Publishers have also observed religion as one of the faster-growing nonfiction categories in the UK in 2025, suggesting the Bible’s momentum is part of a larger curiosity about faith, spirituality, and meaning-making.

Crucially, the UK story isn’t just about purchases; it appears to be connected to wider patterns of religious engagement among young adults. A Reuters report on changing church life described rising attendance among younger Britons—especially men in certain age brackets—and linked that to a search for stability, depth, and community in a post-pandemic culture. Even when those young seekers don’t land in the same place doctrinally, the Bible often becomes a first point of contact: a portable “source text” to test, question, underline, or wrestle with while trying to make sense of the world.

In continental Europe, where faith practice has often seemed more institutionally fragile, there are still meaningful signs of renewed Bible demand in particular settings. The German Bible Society reported that Bible distribution in Germany increased in 2024 to a total of about 333,000 copies of Scripture across formats and translations, up from the year before. On its own, Germany’s increase is not the same kind of “surge” as the UK’s retail story, but it matters because it interrupts the assumption that Europe’s trajectory is only downward. It also highlights an important nuance: the “Bible comeback” can appear through different channels—retail sales, society distribution, digital engagement, or youth editions—depending on local religious infrastructure and publishing ecosystems.

France adds another angle. Even where overall Catholic practice remains in long-term decline, coverage of contemporary French Protestant and evangelical dynamism points repeatedly to personal Bible reading as a central practice drawing newer adherents, including converts and those coming from non-practicing backgrounds. This aligns with what many observers call a “de-institutionalized” religious curiosity: the pull is not always toward inherited structures first, but toward a text perceived as ancient, consequential, and direct—a book that can be read privately before one ever steps into a sanctuary.

So why now—and why among young people who, statistically, still show plenty of skepticism toward institutions? The explanations that come up most consistently are less political than existential. The late-2010s and early-2020s delivered a rapid succession of shocks: a pandemic, mental health strain, economic anxiety, wars streamed in real time, and a digital environment that can leave people both hyperconnected and profoundly isolated. In that kind of atmosphere, the Bible functions in multiple ways at once. For some it is a spiritual lifeline; for others a philosophical anchor; for others still a cultural “decoder ring” for understanding art, history, morality, and the language of the West. UK reporting on the record-high Bible sales explicitly ties the growth to younger people seeking meaning amid uncertainty.

The pathways pulling young people toward Scripture have also changed. Previous eras relied heavily on church-based formation; today, social media, podcasts, and public intellectual ecosystems can act as on-ramps. A young person can encounter Genesis through a debate clip, a Gospel line through a viral testimony, Proverbs through a mental-health influencer, or the Passion narratives through a film scene breakdown. Then, almost inevitably, comes the moment of wanting the text itself—unfiltered, quotable, checkable. That “I want to see it for myself” impulse is one of the healthiest signs in the entire trend, because it suggests something more than nostalgia shopping. It suggests reading.

That said, the new Bible interest is not automatically the same thing as orthodox belief or consistent practice. Even the upbeat survey summaries note a gap between increased reading and full-throated conviction about the Bible’s authority. Many young readers approach Scripture the way they approach other deep sources: with curiosity first, identity later, and sometimes without any intention of joining a church. In a paradoxical way, that may be part of the Bible’s renewed appeal. In a fragmented culture saturated with hot takes, the Bible is not a take. It is a library—ancient, demanding, morally serious, psychologically perceptive, and frequently unsettling. It refuses to fit neatly into a caption.

Whether this trend becomes a durable generational turn or a season of searching will depend on what happens next: whether curiosity matures into community, whether reading becomes formation, whether questions are met with patient guidance rather than gatekeeping, and whether young seekers find the Bible not merely as an artifact of the past but as a living voice that speaks into the present. What can already be said with confidence is simple: in North America and Europe, the Bible is no longer a book that can be safely filed under “declining relevance.” Right now, especially among the young, it is a book moving—off shelves, into hands, and, increasingly, into daily life.