Of the various religious revivals of present-day Catholic Germany the biblical movement has, next to the liturgical, attracted most attention, even among Evangelical Christians. For centuries “Bible-reading” has been so marked a characteristic of Evangelical Christianity that those groups of Evangelical students which correspond to the various Catholic student youth-associations were spoken of as “B.K.’s” (Bibelkreise), i.e., “Bible-circles.” Since the Reformation, Bible-reading has been part of the daily life of every devout Evangelical family, at a time when, even in the best Catholic families, one could search in vain for an unshortened edition of the book in which the word of God was shown forth. There are to-day signs that this particular tradition among Catholics is weakening. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the “book of books” are sold every year; everywhere vigorous “bible-circles” are springing into life.

The 22nd of September, 1932, marked the foundation of something entirely new. On that day there came into being in Stuttgart a central organisation to deal with all matters connected with the propagation of Bible-knowledge. Stuttgart then became the centre of the Catholic Bible Movement. Was it the result of a novel imitation of Evangelical forms of piety, or did it mark the return on the part of Catholics to an ancient Christian custom, which was only discontinued for a short time when the Bible was in danger of being seriously misinterpreted?