I don’t know how soon after the Roman Catholic church switched to the 3 Year Lectionary in the 1960s that the majority of the LCMS followed suit but I’d think it has been at least 40 years by now, the time of a Biblical generation. Still, to this day, I hear from the proponents of the various iterations of the 3 year lectionaries that one of its chief merits, if not its absolute chief merit, is that it better serves to fight Biblical illiteracy in the pews. I think we should be able to test this theory by now. Can it reasonably be thought that parishes that have used the 3 year lectionary for the last 40 years have seen an increase in Biblical literacy? Can we stage a Bible trivia contest between rank and file members of parishes that use the 3 year versus those that use the historic lectionary? I don’t suppose we can. I wish we could because I, for one, am absolutely convinced that the opposite has happened. The 3 year lectionary lacks the repetition that is required for learning and while the rank and file, only Sunday and only once a month, members may have been exposed to more parts of Scripture, they didn’t absorb much. In contrast, those only showing up on random Sundays at churches with the historic lectionary had much better odds of learning something over time. That is what I think, anyway. I don’t know how to prove it, but I don’t think Biblical literacy has increased and it may not be the sole cause, there could simply be a correspondence between sticking with the historic lectionary and love of tradition and conservatism that aids Biblical literacy, but my guess is that the parishes that use the historic lectionary, on average, have members that are better catechized than those in 3 year parishes.