Leaders reflect on what YouVersion list of the most-shared Scriptures in their nation includes—and misses.
The most popular verses for Brazilians in 2023 focused on the provision of God.
Those digitally cracking open their Bibles were most likely to search Joshua 1:9, followed by Jeremiah 29:11 and Isaiah 41:10, according to YouVersion.
Valdemar Kroker, who pastors Igreja Irmãos Menonitas in Curitiba, a city of nearly two million in southern Brazil, found the results unsurprising.
“It’s not surprise to me that Joshua 1:9 is the top verse,” he said. “I’ve heard my father sing this passage countless times.”
Nearly all the verses that made Brazil’s Top 10 are Old Testament texts that ring with a sense of “promise,” according to Paulo Won, a Presbyterian pastor, theology professor, and content creator.
“The focus is on what God can do in us, in the sense of granting us victories in life, more than on how we can be molded to God’s will, and thus live the discipleship that presupposes eventual difficulties and tribulations,” he said. “It’s a clear diagnosis that our way of living the gospel is largely triumphalist.”
The appearance of these verses suggest that Christians aren’t learning the Bible as a “grand narrative” or always being given the larger context of where these words come from, says Cynthia Muniz, a biologist and theologian.
“The Brazilian evangelical scene itself has been strongly influenced by triumphalist theologies, so that some of these texts can be understood as personal promises of prosperity and victory, including material ones,” she said.
YouVersion’s apps include tools designed to help people read the Bible more frequently and pray more regularly. These were downloaded …
