Libby Anne, everyone’s favorite former-fundamentalist feminist atheist, comes to the defense of Christians who don’t claim to interpret the Bible “literally”:
Evangelicals and fundamentalists claim over and over and over again that all they are doing is taking the Bible “at face value.” According to evangelicals and fundamentalists, they are the ones who are actually following the Bible and liberal Christians are not. Liberal Christians, they say, have rejected the Bible and simply do and believe whatever they think best. Because evangelicals and fundamentalists trumpet this message so loudly, it can be easy to end up taking them at their word.
I disagree with much Libby Anne has to say in her post, particularly her classification of people like me as “liberal” Christians, excluding us from the category of evangelicals, with whom I still identify. She totally nails the mentality of some biblical literalists, though—the false sense of holding the hermeneutical high ground because they rationalize away different parts of the Bible than “liberal” Christians do.