Every year since 1620, Thanksgiving reminds us the harvest we bless around the table is bound to biblical gratitude. The strangers who came ashore as Pilgrims brought many supplies, but none was more vital than their faith. On uncertain shores, they planted rights of conscience that became the heart of a nation.

Though many people today live without knowing much about the Bible, the United States has had a National Bible Week every November since 1941. The eve of this November marks an especially important time: it's the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther's posting of his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Chapel door in Germany on October 31, 1517.

A German monk, Luther believed individual life was organized through a path of direct personal faith and contact with the Creator. Before Luther, the Bible as a central authority for the individual was embraced by other reformers. But conjoined to the arrival of the Gutenberg printing press, and then the translation of Scripture from Greek and Hebrew into modern languages, the Bible taught whole populations to read. This would prove key to citizen literacy and would have historically explosive force throughout the Reformation and centuries ahead.

We have, however, a biblical literacy problem now. There are several probable causes. One is a questioning of authority at large in all domains of life. Another is the spread of the internet - which lets everything be at our command, and nothing be seen as worth more than anything else.

Though access to the internet has widened massively, a biblical institute (Center for the Study of Global Christianity) cites only 28 percent of the literate population in Europe today as owning a print copy of the Bible. The Barna Group, a religious polling firm in Ventura, California, in fact, notes a decline in the weekly reading of the Bible to 37 percent in 2017 from 46 percent in 2009.

The Bible is still read faithfully everywhere. But Americans ascribe less authority to the Bible than earlier in our history, as well as spend less time with it each week. There is some feeling the pace of life intrudes on time with Scripture, and that professional career and work patterns, over simpler ones of the past, do not harmonize as well with faith systems.

A timely feature in The Christian Science Monitor Weekly on "Luther's Legacy" and direct Bible engagement suggests a movement of the "center of gravity from Europe and North America to the Southern Hemisphere." Africans, for example, are twice as likely as others to read the Bible four times a week and see it as the Word of God (The Barna Group). And technology, now as in the 16th century, is a help rather than rub - in broadening as well as shortening translation times.

According to some, the interest in Scriptures is starting to grow again. It's noteworthy a new Museum of the Bible is opening in Washington, DC this November. Still, more than 160 million people remain without access to one Bible in their language. Since people overwhelmingly prefer a print over digital version, Bible distribution remains an issue 500 years after Luther.

The Public Square believes the arc of history will never bend independently from the heritage of the Bible. The Bible is too central to the character of individual life and public ethics not to remain deeply entwined with the future. The period of digital reach in fact has been labeled a "second Gutenberg." So no defense of the Bible is needed. But a reminder of its value is never out of order, especially at Thanksgiving.

The Bible is the most read book in the world. Its use of language is beyond compare. It fuses, as no other text, realms of profound thought and feeling. It became the first basis for broad public education, and its stress on conscience has inspired the advance of individual rights. Over the years, the Bible has hastened the path of liberty and law. It also has provided the modern state much of its ethical base.

As a bulwark of Western civil order, the Bible's teachings have cemented many bonds of trust across the civilized world. It has helped form the case for modern capitalism. The Bible, for example, undergirds contractual ethics in business. And it has been a great inspiration for significant reform movements. Indeed, the biblical quest for justice has powerfully influenced the abolition of slavery, prison reform, and women's rights.

Between its covers, the Bible conveys much of the true substance of life. Great speeches continue to draw upon Biblical points of human peril. Our writing is measured even today against biblical clarity. No stories are better told or contain more enduring lessons for people of every station. The mind is forever stretched as well as calmed by reading Scripture. In and out of houses of prayer, its words are quoted weekly around the world 2000 years later.

The Bible disciplines us, educates us, inspires us. Because education for information has pretty much separated itself from enduring teaching, the Bible as the chief moral tissue of society actually assumes a larger not smaller place for the future. As the book has admittedly become an instrument of less value, so it may seem the Bible could have lost fashion as well. In truth it anchors us, and will continue to moisten, measure, and lead the ages.