Biblical literalism and fundamentalism are a relatively new innovation developed in the past century and half. Taking a deeply complex work like the Bible and attempting to read it "literally" just spawns more approaches and complications; it doesn't mean that fundamentalists have discovered the one approach that's true to the text.

I was also raised in a fundamentalist / evangelical church. I'll back you up on this as your interpretation is completely correct. coldtea's interpretation would be completely alien in any of the churches of my youth. In the United States at least, it would be completely alien outside of academia.

The history of fundamentalism, an Anglo-American creation (not to mention the history of the existence of the U.S. itself) is but a fraction of the history of Christianity.

Indeed it is. However, it will be the dominant experience of Christianity for many of us. Hence the previous snarky statement, and how that statement is correct for those of us who endured that experience.

You are correct. This notion that Christians don’t “really” believe in God is the latest marketing gimmick of a desperate Church. It’s sad, really. All four of my grandparents would be deeply upset by it.

It’s hard to imagine who Augustine wrote his Confessions to or on whose behalf Galileo was killed, if all these people were just talking about metaphors.

Historically, people have been killed for way less than metaphors.

If you built a power structure on top of a religion, or if you think that preserving respect to certain ideas leads to a more harmonious society in general, you can very easily prosecute people that undermine them, whether you believe them as real or not.

>There are millions of Christians like this in the US alone, let alone the rest of the world. I'm not sure what you're trying to push with your interpretation of christianity, but it's certainly not common, given that it assumes their god doesn't exist.

What I'm getting at is that it doesn't have to assume their god doesn't exist, as this is a negligible detail (implementation detail) on the respective worldview and its results in everyday life, culture, etc (not in the coarse grained debates in the US 15th-21th centuries, but in the course of 2 millennia of European and global history).