{"id":31307,"date":"2015-09-01T06:17:53","date_gmt":"2015-09-01T10:17:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/?p=31307"},"modified":"2015-09-01T06:17:53","modified_gmt":"2015-09-01T10:17:53","slug":"take-the-bible-literally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/09\/take-the-bible-literally.html","title":{"rendered":"Take the Bible Literally"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"James<\/p>\n

N. T. Wrong<\/a> reminded me of this great quote from James Barr:<\/p>\n

In my opinion, it was a big mistake for many of the mainline religious organizations when they opposed the creationists by saying that the Bible should not be taken literally. This is not what the creationists do. It is, on the contrary, what the churches and other organisations\u00a0<\/span>should do<\/em>: that is, to argue that, in this respect, the Bible\u2019s figures\u00a0<\/span>should<\/em>\u00a0be taken literally, because it is when they are taken literally it becomes clear that they are not historically or scientifically true.<\/span>
\u2013 James Barr<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The point is a good one, and when liberal and progressive Christians say that the Bible should not be taken literally, they seem to mean precisely that \u2013 that the literal meaning is simply unacceptable, whether for scientific, historical, or ethical reasons. On that point, see the recent articles by Derek Penwell<\/a> and Jennifer Grace Bird<\/a>. What needs to be emphasized, in my opinion, is that, despite their claims, the fundamentalists are not Biblical literalists themselves. And the rhetoric of \u201cliteral\u201d vs. \u201cnon-literal\u201d can play into these false claims of fundamentalists. As Penwell writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What I want to challenge is the persistent and difficult-to-kill assumption that conservatives occupy some kind of religious and ethical high ground, and that any deviation from a particular kind of conservative orthodoxy isn\u2019t merely a matter of interpretation, but is tantamount to initiating hostilities against God, motherhood, and the flag\u2013all of which, interestingly enough, are conflated in some people\u2019s minds. But that\u2019s another article.<\/p>\n

The smug certainty with which some conservative religious and political types believe not just that they occupy the side of truth on every issue, but that they occupy the side of\u00a0God\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0truth is alarming\u2013not because they believe these things of themselves so uncritically (self-righteousness is a time-honored religious and political posture on\u00a0both<\/em>\u00a0sides of the ideological divide, after all), but because so many in the culture agree to cede them this authoritative land of milk and honey.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click through to read his whole article<\/a>. And see too the post by Dan McClellan\u00a0\u201cOn the Myth of Scriptural Literalism,\u201d<\/a> in which he writes:<\/p>\n

Literalists are not literal about scripture, they\u2019re literal about their ideology. Scripture is secondary. Religious groups don\u2019t derive doctrine from the literal interpretation of scripture, they derive doctrine from negotiating between their group\u2019s past, the needs of the present within a cultural context, and their\u00a0<\/span>interpretation<\/em>\u00a0(which is not literal) of scripture. It\u2019s very important to keep in mind that that last item serves the other two.\u00a0Scripture is the authority to which religionists appeal for their beliefs. It is not the source of their beliefs. It is flexible and ambiguous and malleable enough to say what religious groups need it to say. There are ideological literalists, and scripture is their paint and palette. There are no scriptural literalists.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some part of that will definitely be turned into a meme here soon. In the meantime, click through to read the rest of the post<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

N. T. Wrong reminded me of this great quote from James Barr: In my opinion, it was a big mistake for many of the mainline religious organizations when they opposed the creationists by saying that the Bible should not be taken literally. This is not what the creationists do. It is, on the contrary, what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":31480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[5523,6618,6621,7864],"class_list":["post-31307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","tag-james-barr","tag-literal","tag-literalism","tag-n-t-wrong"],"yoast_head":"\nTake the Bible Literally<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"N. T. 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