When did literalist interpretation become popular in America?

Question

A friend told me it took off in the late eighteen hundreds. Is that accurate?

Answer 1

Your friend is correct. It really began with an event known as the "Great Awakening." Here's a website for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Awakening

Answer 2

Rather difficult to say, because it depends on what one means by literalist interpretation. For instance believing the Bible to be the Word of God, and that every word in the original is inspired, - that belief has always existed. During the period before the Great Awakening, there was not much belief in the Bible at all, in fact, both atheism and Unitarianism seem to have been very common.
There are some who are so literalistic that they make no room for any figurative language at all in the Bible - they read it the way you would read no other book - not exactly a popular practise. On the other hand, there are those who try to find a hidden meaning behind everything they read in the Bible. For instance (and I'm making this one up) crossing the Red Sea would really mean people going through their emotional difficulties! Or the Feeding of the Five Thousand would mean that the people present were so touched by the generosity of the boy who offered his lunch that they all brought their lunches out and shared! (I've actually heard this one taught). But you wouldn't read any other book in this way. It's really stretching things. One either believes Jesus miraculously multiplied the loaves and fish, or one believes the story was made up. The other interpretation does not respect the text at all.
So, to get back to the question, literal interpretation in the normal sense of the word never 'became' popular, it has always been the general way the bible was understood by believers. In the extreme sense, it has never been popular.

Answer 3

That was when the Fundamentalist movement began, but the issue is more complex. Go all the way back to the ancient Church. There were two main schools of Biblical interpretation, in Antioch and in Alexandria. The Antiochenes leaned toward a literal interpretation (John Chrysostom, for example). The Alexandrians leaned toward an allegorical interpretation (Origen, for example). So there's been this kind of conflict for a long, long time. Even in America, there were literalists (such as the Calvinist Puritans) and free-thinkers (Deists and the early Unitarians) pretty much from the beginning.

Answer 4

I think that Christians were originally literalist. Back when the Bible was written, people believed literally in the various gods. Most religions start off fairly radical, just look at the history of the US born religion, the Latter Day Saints. They believe that Joseph Smith literally was given golden tablets that contained the Book of Mormon. Most still believe that book to be literally true.

Over time, a religion will mellow a bit and various off-shoots will form based on disagreements on interpretation of the religion. Some of those off-shoots will be more literal and some less. Eventually, in a culture of diversity, the religion will mellow out a bit and people will start interpretting the religion more symbolically. However, there will still be groups that try to go back orthodoxy and become more fanatic and literalist.

Answer 5

Since we got off the boat. We brought it over from England, Spain, etc... remember, the churches mainly ruled over there, so they took a literal approach to a lot of things. I think it just escalated over here, while it's dying out in Europe. Hopefully it'll die down here soon too.

Answer 6

When people started to get Bibles of their own to read, the people then started to quote straight from the bible itself instead of how it traditionally was previously when the pastor or priest would preach his interpretation of the Bible to them and they would sit in church and listen.

There is nothing traditional about the traditionalists use of literal bible quotation at all, it is quite a recent phenomenon

Answer 7

Get over it. Do you not have a life of your own?

Answer 8

It's always been popular.