The Bible may be the most printed and bestselling book in the world in the last 50 years, but only less than half of practicing American Christians spend time regularly engaging with it, according to the American Bible Society (ABS), based on evidence gathered by the Barna Group over a six-year period.

(Reuters/Stringer/Australia) Flight Engineer Chris Poole reads a small Bible aboard a Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) P3 Orion maritime search aircraft as it flies over the southern Indian Ocean looking for debris from missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.

During a presentation at the Movement Day Global Cities conference held at the Jacob Javits Center last week, ABS' Project Ignition director Samuel Harrell presented evidence gathered by Barna from a six-year assessment. Based on the collected data, only 18 percent of American adults reads the Bible and only 37 percent of the practicing Christians in the United States engage with the Holy Book, The Christian Post details.

"We have been having the honor of walking for a number of years with Barna Group and studying the state of the Bible in America," said Harrell. "I know that you and I are feeling the change in the winds and the trends that are affecting us, so you probably had conversations about just what feels very real about the Bible in our culture."

In addition, the study shows that millennials are the ones least engaged with their Bible with just 12 percent. Adults, on the other hand, represent 26 percent of that group.

On the other hand, 62 percent of Americans expressed their desire to read the Bible more but admitted being defeated by challenges. Remarking on this, Harrell said millennials consider the Bible merely as just another book, and some of them even think it is a dangerous book.

Meanwhile, Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham wondered how is it that Americans are becoming increasingly illiterate when it comes to the Bible. In a Facebook post and a blog entry last month, he said Bible illiteracy is a sign that there are problems within the Christian church, Christian Today reports.

For Ham, America has drifted away from its Christian roots. He noted that only a few people nowadays are being taught about the Bible, thus biblical illiteracy has spread throughout the country.