Practicing Christians Report Less Difficulty Forgiving Themselves and Others, Survey Finds
American Bible Society research suggests that Christians who are more active in their faith and Bible reading are less likely to struggle with forgiving themselves and others.
“We see that those who are committed to their faith and to reading the Bible are more likely to give and experience forgiveness,” American Bible Society Chief Innovation Officer and State of the Bible Editor-in-Chief John Farquhar Plake said in a statement.
The findings appear in the sixth installment of the “State of the Bible: USA 2026” report. Titled “Forgiveness,” the chapter is based on a Jan. 8-27 survey of 2,649 U.S. adults.
Overall, 29% of respondents said “It is really hard for me to accept myself once I’ve messed up” was “true of me,” while 56% said it was “not true of me.”
Forty percent said “If others mistreat me, I continue to think badly of them” was true, compared with 41% who said it was not. On divine forgiveness, 81% rejected the statement “I have done things for which there is no divine forgiveness,” while 10% agreed.
Casual Christians were the most likely to report difficulty forgiving themselves, at 38%, followed by nominal Christians at 30%.
Practicing Christians — defined as those who identify as Christian, attend church at least monthly and “strongly agree” that faith is important — reported lower levels of difficulty forgiving themselves (23%) and others (24%).
Nominal Christians (40%) and casual Christians (39%) were also more likely to say they continued to think “badly” of people who had mistreated them, compared with 24% of practicing Christians.
Casual Christians were the most likely to believe some actions were beyond God’s forgiveness (19%), followed by nominal Christians (11%) and practicing Christians (3%).
Similar patterns appeared among respondents grouped by Bible engagement. Twenty-five percent of the “Scripture Engaged” said they struggled with self-forgiveness, compared with 30% in both the “Movable Middle” and “Bible Disengaged” groups.
Difficulty forgiving others was reported by 48% of the Bible Disengaged, 34% of the Movable Middle and 21% of the Scripture Engaged.
The Movable Middle was most likely to believe God could not forgive them in some cases (14%), followed by the Bible Disengaged (10%) and the Scripture Engaged (5%).
“We suspect that, in both cases, this middle position — somewhat engaged, somewhat practicing — creates an awareness of God’s standards without a full understanding of his mercy,” the report states.
Respondents who found it easier to forgive others also scored higher on the Human Flourishing Index, averaging 7.4 compared with 6.5 among those who struggled. The same pattern appeared with self-forgiveness.
Those who struggled to forgive themselves also reported greater loneliness, scoring 13.5 on a 20-point scale compared with 10.6 among those who did not. Difficulty forgiving others showed a similar gap, 12.6 compared with 10.9.
Stress levels were also notably higher among respondents who struggled with self-forgiveness, averaging 14.4 on a 40-point scale compared with 6.9 among those who did not.
