The fact that Catholics state which portions of the Bible will be read at mass, and read them on a schedule, enables protestants to state: “Catholics only read 12% of the Bible, excluding Psalms, and that’s pathetic.” The statistic, of course, does not include any private readings that individual Catholics may do on their own.
Protestants, with a couple of exceptions, do not have any set schedule of readings, so how does anyone know how much of the Bible they read? I am positive that there are extremely few pastors who assign one book of the Bible per week to be read by their congregation, and who then preach a sermon on that book. Even so, a full year would not get through the Bible. And they certainly don’t read a full book per week aloud to their congregations.
Protestants, on the other hand, concentrate on a very few books of the Bible, and preach them till their congregation THINKS it is getting the Bible, when in reality they are not. Instead, Protestants preach Bible stories, on the level of a 12 yo, for the main part.
Before I became Catholic, I attended Protestant churches each for half a year at least. I did not hear as much of the Bible in them, as I did in the Catholic church. Of course, I was interested in the Bible, and read it several times before making a decision. I still read it, in several versions.
Oh, and NO ONE told me what to believe, or if they tried, I ignored them. I guess you’d have to say I was led by the Holy Spirit, because that has always been my prayer before reading.
Speaking for Baptists: we generally do NOT read significant portions of scripture during the service. The SBC Sunday School curriculum covers the entire Bible, although no one is required to use it.
Every Baptist church I’ve ever been in - including the KJV-only one that I walked out of mid-sermon - encouraged reading the Bible. Most encourage reading it daily...I couldn’t count the sermons I’ve heard supporting that, possibly because so few do. For myself, I currently do NOT read the entire Bible on a regular basis, although I have a number of times. I may start up again...and there are one and two year Bibles available for easy use - one example:
We do NOT exclude the Old Testament, although I’m sure many (as I suspect Catholics do as well) concentrate more on the histories and Isaiah than, say, Leviticus! And yes, I skip the genealogies as well...
Before moving to a Systematic Theology text, the last books our Sunday School class looked at were Isaiah, Micah, Galatians and James (took about 6 months).
“Before I became Catholic, I attended Protestant churches each for half a year at least. I did not hear as much of the Bible in them, as I did in the Catholic church. Of course, I was interested in the Bible, and read it several times before making a decision. I still read it, in several versions”.
I grew up going to Baptist and Pentacostal services and if I had a dollar for every sermon I heard from a pastor that didn’t have a Bible in his hand and didn’t mention the Bible I would be rich. The times he even had a Bible he beat the hell out of it with his fist and said we were all going to hell in band basket if we didn’t change our ways and get straight with the Lord. “And Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me”. “Now throw down those cigarettes you’re smoking and quit drinking that vile devil’s brew or you are going straight to hell real fast”. The pastor would rant and rave for about two hours telling us all we were going to hell. Most of the time he would be singing and trying to dance, a lot of the time looking like he was going through a epileptic seizure. After services the plate would come around and the preacher got the money, hoped in his 65 Cadillac and took off with his blonde-headed girlfriend. He would would last for about six months before someone got wind that he was ripping off everybody. Then he would disappear, never to be seen again.