She Reads Truth: The movement inspiring women to read their Bibles more | Opinion

“Is the Bible for me?”

We didn’t fully understand the experiment we were beginning, but this was the question driving our search, the point of curiosity that started our not-quite-scientific process.

As women who were once girls growing up in the church, we had been around the Bible all our lives. We read it, at least in part, as children and high schoolers and college students. Now young moms with kids of our own, we opened our Bibles in church on Sundays, at Bible study with friends and sometimes even in between. Still, we wanted more.

The Bible was the book we said we believed. We staked our faith on its message, and we wanted to know — really know — what it said. Our hypothesis was that this book is for all of us, and we are meant to read it. So why did it seem so hard to develop a discipline of reading the Bible regularly? Why did the idea of reading it for ourselves seem as radical as it did intimidating?

Was the Bible only for pastors and theologians and teachers, or was it for us too?

More Americans want to read the Bible, but don't

The questions we asked in 2012 were not new then, and they are not new now. The American Bible Society’s 2025 State of the Bible survey shows that Americans are rich in Bibles — three-fourths own at least one. Over half of Americans say they want to read the Bible more, but they don’t.

What’s stopping them?

As it turns out, many of us are intimidated when it comes to reading the Bible. We aren’t sure what to read first, what to read next, or how to approach this ancient text whose original audience lived thousands of years and miles from us.

Details of inside the reproduction copy of the First American Bible, Aitken Bibles, at the Tennessee State Captiol in Nashville, Tenn., Friday, June 21, 2024.

When we voiced a desire 13 years ago to read our Bibles more, we quickly found we were not alone. The internet rippled with echoes of “I want that, too!” Believing the Bible is somehow also for us, we started reading it despite our intimidations, emboldened by the power of doing this shoulder-to-shoulder instead of alone.

Chapter after chapter, book after book, one day at a time, an all-female online community of daily Bible readers was born with the hashtag #shereadstruth.

How a Bible-reading movement was born

Those early years of the She Reads Truth community were shaped by thousands of individual stories, each different and yet the same.

A new mom cradled her new baby in the quiet of a dark night, rocking and nursing while the world slept. Motherhood was more beautiful than she dreamed and also harder than she expected. With her free hand she opened an iPhone app and read words from the God whose presence never leaves. 

A few states over, a middle-aged woman stared at the ceiling as she lay awake from the terrible but familiar sensation of chronic pain. She could not find relief, but she could find peace. Gently sitting upright, she flipped on the lamp and opened the Bible on her bedside table to Jesus’s words in John 16: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (v. 33).

It happened all across the country, women opening their smartphones, laptops, Bibles and reading guides any time of day or night. Some read with morning coffee in hand and kids underfoot. Some read in a cubicle on their lunch break, others in their favorite chair before bed. In all 50 states and around the globe, women were opening their Bibles where they were, just as they were.

That Bible-reading experiment became an online movement which became She Reads Truth — an organization that now celebrates over one million Bibles sold, releases 12 curated Bible reading plans a year, produces a weekly podcast, offers daily online community, engages a loyal social platform of almost a million followers and employs two dozen staffers to keep the movement alive and growing.

'She Reads Truth': finding freedom, belonging and community

Why does it work?

The She Reads Truth community provides something larger than direction, accountability and consistency. Women are finding freedom, belonging and meaning.

An overseas missionary writes, “I’ve walked with God for a long time, but over the past year I’ve used your app consistently. I’ve read the Word more during this year than I have ever in my life.”Another woman comments, “Not only have your studies enabled me to get out of the funk of ‘where do I start reading,’ but reading my Bible is no longer a chore; I absolutely crave it!”

And another: “I have avoided reading the Bible because it has felt so intimidating for me. The artistic aesthetic of your books speak to my creative soul and has stirred up so much enthusiasm within me. It feels like God created this book just for me.”

It feels like God created this book just for me. That is a powerful feeling.

More women are returning to the Word and flourishing

In an age brimming with experts and influencers, millions of Christian women are turning back to the primary source. The women in the She Reads Truth community keep coming back to their Bibles not because they are cultivating a healthy habit or finding community, although they are. (That same American Bible Society survey found a positive correlation between Bible reading and human flourishing.)

By reading their Bible, women are growing in their relationship with God. They are breaking through what once felt like a rote obligation to find a gloriously open invitation on the other side. They are finding that this book from God is for them, and they are invited to a lifelong deep dive of its beauty, goodness and truth.

So is the hypothesis true?

We aren’t scientists, but the answer seems clear. For over 13 years we have had a front row seat as women of all ages, backgrounds and life stages have opened their Bibles and met God there. They are choosing to read truth on the good days and hard days, on Sundays and Wednesdays and all the days in between.

And what we have found is a treasure too rich not to share: The Bible is for you.

Raechel Myers

Amanda Bible Williams

Raechel Myers and Amanda Bible Williams are the co-founders of She Reads Truth and co-authors of "The Bible is For You," released this month by B&H Publishing.