Elaine Pagels Quotes

Fundamentalism has stood aloof from the liberal in self-conscious superiority and has on its own part fallen into error, the error of textualism, which is simply orthodoxy without the Holy Ghost. Everywhere among conservatives we find persons who are Bible-taught but not Spirit-taught. They conceive truth to be something which they can grasp with the mind.

Yeah, I have been because, generally speaking, to we Biblical literalists, the media is very hostile.

The Bible has been through millions of rounds of exegesis and interpretation, but it hasn't been until quite recently that it's been taken as the absolute truth, to the point where people expect it to inform ideas about biology and life on this planet.

The idea of literalism in the Bible is a very new phenomenon. In many ways, it's a product of the scientific revolution.

The accepted versions of the Bible are all substantially correct.

Extremists often derive their inspiration from literal interpretations of texts that should rightly be read not as Associated Press reports from the ancient world, but as theological and literary enterprises requiring independent intellectual assessment.

I'm a real simple person. I believe that the Bible means what it says, and says what it means.

One can't understand the Christian Right and similar movements unless one sees them as reactive - they're reacting to what they call secular humanism.

There are two views of interpreting the Bible in America: that every word is literally the truth without qualification, and then the other view is, it's called plenary inspiration, which holds that all religious truth taught in the Bible is true from God, but each word is not necessarily interpreted literally.

Within the Christian tradition, fundamentalism arose in the 19th century as an effort to push back against modern' readings of the Bible that suggested everything in the text wasn't true in some literal sense.

To get overprotective about particular readings of the Bible is always in danger of idolatry.

The Bible is the inerrant ... word of the living God. It is absolutely infallible, without error in all matters pertaining to faith and practice, as well as in areas such as geography, science, history, etc.

Conservative Christianity is headquartered in the South.

Religious scholars, marginalized by modernization, seek to assert their own relevance by insisting on orthodoxy.

The Bible states it. It must be so.

We read the whole Bible, cover to cover, over and over again... It wasn't that we read selective parts of the Bible. It was that we interpreted it in this very selective way.

The approach we try to take here [Morris's Institute for Creation Research] is to assume that the word of God is the word of God and that God is able to say what He means and means what He says, and that's in the Bible and that is our basis. And then we interpret the scientific data within that framework.

We must allow the Bible to say what is says, not what we think it ought to say.

It must be conceded by those who admit the authority of Scripture (such only he is addressing) that from the decision of the word of God there can be no appeal.

Moral Majority, n. Neither

Philosophers are best able to understand properly the allegorical passages of the Koran on the basis of their logical training. There is no religious stipulation that all such passages have to be interpreted literally.

No man … ever believes that the Bible means what it says; he is always convinced that it says what he means.

Your narrow and sectarian prejudices make war upon The Bible …. upon the Pentateuch, while facing the East with his head covered.]

The Bible is not a history book.

Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current view of the world and consecrate it.