the point about the 'literal truth' answer is that they're getting at those, among christians, who have been taught that it's the literal truth. and, whether they really believe that or not, they are willing to say this to the pollster. some do it b/c fear of the wrath of god has been drilled into them. others respond defiantly, knowing full well that there are theological debates of the sort that take place as the lunch table, as they did at work not too long ago. not a debate exactly, just a low level discussion of if we were raised in a religion and how we involved religion in our lives now (or didn't).
it's a way to measure the degree of adherence to what, in the sociology of christian religions, we used to call fundamentalism. one of the markers, at least a decade ago, was the response to that question: whether the bible is the literal word -- or something else.
btw, i was reading _Is Bill Cosby Right?_ at work. Someone asked me, at lunch, how far I'd gotten into it and if it was good. Long story short, we're going to lobby HR to let us have a conference room during lunch for book reading. Christ. They have a training seminar -- brownbag lunch -- hosting the likes of Weight Watchers, financial investment advisers and stress management gurus. We figure we should host book reading groups for something different.
I figure we'd sluth out the titles as we go along, but anyone got any good ideas for books that won't cause too much of a stir? Things that won't drive me batty, but won't be so controversial it'll cause problems... Like I said, I work in an environment where it's about 50% black, 25% white, the rest Latina/o, Native American, Asian. Need to be affordable, of course.
k
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