Things Episcopalians Say: 'Not Literally'?

In the first of what might become a series, I ask us to behold “things Episcopalians say.” These are some of our favorite slogans of self-understanding, frequently employed in the service of self-differentiation, sometimes in the service of self-congratulation.

We begin with what I regard as a beguiling, even promising, hermeneutical proposal: “We don’t take the Bible literally, but we do take it seriously.” There is a lot to like about this slogan. It tells us that there are indeed all sorts of ways a thoughtful Christian could engage the Bible without devolving into a naïve biblicism or a crass literalism. I confess that before I was aware that this was a slogan — or maybe before I had even heard the slogan (I can’t recall) — I frequently employed a variant to what I thought was good effect: “You don’t have to take the Bible literally to take it seriously.”