THREAD: Sociologists, we need to clear something up about Americans' Bible beliefs.
There's a difference between belief in biblical... 1) inspiration, 2) inerrancy, & 3) literalism.
Just read another article where someone use the terms interchangeably & we gotta stop it. 1/8
There's a difference between belief in biblical... 1) inspiration, 2) inerrancy, & 3) literalism.
Just read another article where someone use the terms interchangeably & we gotta stop it. 1/8
Belief in "biblical inspiration" simply means that one believes "the Bible" (autographs? the one in my hands?) was written w/God's divine guidance. How much guidance is open to debate. Belief in "inerrancy" is related, but different. It has a hotly contested history but... 2/8
...to those who care about it, inerrancy means the original autographs behind our modern Bibles are w/o error in all they affirm, including matters of religion, morality, science, & history. You CAN believe the Bible is divinely inspired w/o being a STRICT inerrantist. Now... 3/8
...here's where some sociologists get confused. Our common measures of "biblical literalism" (like in the GSS or Baylor Surveys) are not telling us about belief in "inerrancy" per se. Literalism is an approach to interpreting the Bible that presupposes inerrancy, but other... 4/8
...interpretive approaches can start from inerrancy too. One who believes "The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word. We must interpret its meaning," probably also holds inerrantist views, but their interpretive... 5/8
...approach is more nuanced. So we shouldn't use "biblical literalist" as a synonym for "inerrantist," anymore than we'd use "Christian nationalist" as a synonym for "conservative." The former is almost invariably a member of the latter, but the 2 aren't the same.
Finally... 6/8
Finally... 6/8
what do our "biblical literalism" questions really measure? Despite what I just said about literalism as a concept, I don't think those questions really tell us about a person's interpretive approach to the Bible. I'm convinced they tell us that one wishes to self-identify... 7/8
...as (1) a person who sees the Bible as their highest authority (so they pick the most extreme/conservative answer) & (2) as cultural/religious conservative. That's how we should use those measures. They tell us something about biblical authority & cultural conservatism 8/8
