ABSTRACT
This book is about ordinary churchgoers and their relationship to the Bible. ‘The person in the pew’ might be one way of describing ordinary churchgoers, though as someone who has worked hard to update the interior of at least one historic church, I like to think that pews are not the only form of church seating. Keeping pews out of the definition reminds us just how varied churchgoing can be. Many people no longer sit on pews, if they ever did, and indeed some do not go to churches or chapels at all. Instead they may meet in homes, village halls, schools and community centres. Churchgoers in the widest sense denotes Christians who gather together to worship, and I use it to distinguish such people from those who either have another or no religious affiliation, or who might see themselves as Christian, but who never attend worship. Most of what follows is applicable to Christians who attend church, rather than to the public at large. This is an important caveat, as we shall see, because the way in which you might go about studying how the general public relates to the Bible is quite different from the way you study churchgoers.
