The data for a new poll on the Bible is up on the Gallup website. I am slightly confused by what the poll was attempting to measure, as it seems to confuse “literal interpretation” of the Bible with belief in the Bible as the “actual word of God. Here is an excerpt from the accompanying description of the poll:

Three in 10 Americans interpret the Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God. That is similar to what Gallup has measured over the last two decades, but down from the 1970s and 1980s. A 49% plurality of Americans say the Bible is the inspired word of God but that it should not be taken literally, consistently the most common view in Gallup’s nearly 40-year history of this question. Another 17% consider the Bible an ancient book of stories recorded by man.

The phrase that I found confusing was in the first sentence: “three in 10 Americans interpret the Bible literally, saying it is the actual word of God.” I interpret the Bible “literally” when I understand the words of a text to signify the things they describe. That is, I believe that Mary was “literally” the mother of Jesus. “Literal” could also describe this sense of the Bible in general, that is, the foundational sense from which all other senses, spiritual, moral, and other, emerge.

Yet, how one understands the Bible as “the actual word of God” is an interesting question also. I suspect the pollsters mean that the Bible as “the actual word of God” indicates that God has directly “spoken” these words as opposed to a view of the Bible as written by human beings, somehow under the inspired direction of God, or inspired by God, yet that is not clear. I do, for instance, think the Bible is the word of God, inspired by God and written by people. The three views available to choose are as follows: the Bible is the actual word of God, the Bible is the inspired word of God, or the Bible is a book of fables, legends history and moral precepts recorded by people.

Gallup has consistently found strong differences in views of the Bible as the “actual word of God” by religiosity and education. The current poll also finds significant income differences, with 50% of lower-income respondents believing the Bible is the actual word of God, compared with 27% of middle-income and 15% of high-income respondents. These income differences are larger than what Gallup has measured in the past, with a higher percentage of low-income Americans believing the Bible is literally true.

Apart from educational differences, Catholics also score lower than Protestants on thinking that the Bible is the “actual word of God” (21% to 41%), but higher on believing that the Bible is the “inspired word of God” (65% to 46%). Now, I am certain that your view of the Bible is not dependent upon polls or poll questions, but if you were given these three options, even with some confusion regarding “literal” and “actual word of God,” what would you choose?

John W. Martens

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John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.