Biblical Proportions of the American Bible Society

Everyone except the most rigid secularists would agree that the Bible has been the most influential book in American history. The American Bible Society (ABS), founded in 1816, has been the most important agency in putting Bibles into Americans’ hands. Tracking the number of Bibles the ABS has distributed is like counting the number of hamburgers McDonald's has sold; in the 1990s, the burger giant just stopped counting how many "billions" had been served. It is not trite to note the comparable scale of distribution between the ABS and McDonald's: The ABS and similar Bible agencies have operated on an assumption that mass delivery of the holy book was, humanly speaking, an end unto itself. The Bible held the message of salvation through Jesus Christ and it was the foundation of Western "Judeo-Christian" civilization. The best thing was to distribute God's Word, and let God do the rest.