In a posting entitled, "In U.S., 3 in 10 Say They Take the Bible Literally," Gallup reports its latest findings concerning American views of the Bible. According to those findings, just 30% of Americans agreed that "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally." Nearly half (49%) agreed that "the Bible is the inspired word of God but that it should not be taken literally." And another 17% agreed that "the Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by man." That is, less than 1/3rd of Americans believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God while just about 1/2 see it as inspired but not to be read literally. These figures have held relatively steady over the last decade although those who believe in a literal Bible has declined since the 1980s.According to Gallup, church goers, Protestants, people with less education, conservatives, and Republicans are more likely to believe that the Bible is the literal Word of God. Those who rarely attend church, have a postgraduate education, and indicate no religious preference are more likely to see the Bible as a human book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts.
One of the most interesting bits of data in the Gallup posting is that nearly half (45%) of those who considered themselves "conservative" agreed with the idea that the Bible does not have to be read literally while 14% of those who self-identified themselves as "liberal" also agreed to the statement that the Bible is to be read literally. This suggests that in the real world of how people actually think about things more mixing and matching goes on than one might expect in the white heat of the American culture wars. Our labels for people's thinking don't always work that well. That's a good thing.
The other thing that seems to be happening is that a large number of American Protestants including many evangelical Protestants are learning how to adapt their thinking about the Bible to the intellectual currents of our time. Before the rise of science and its approach to critical thinking, the whole question of the fallibility or infallibility of the Bible was not an issue of importance. All that we have learned about the Bible through the use of critical historical study, however, challenges the traditional understanding of how the Bible has evolved over time down to the present. The result is that we are rethinking our view of Scripture in ways that make more sense today. From ancient times, Christian thinkers have repeatedly drawn from the main intellectual currents of their day in seeking to understand the nature of our faith. We are continuing to do that today, and it isn't just the thinkers who are learning to think about faith in contemporary terms. Many others of us are doing so as well. And that, too, is a good thing.
