It takes a strong imagination to approach Scripture literally.
Evangelical Christianity is supposed to cleave to the text even more exactly. Most evangelicals describe the Bible as literally true. Yet for many, “literally” often means “keep what’s there and add details to make it vivid.”
I am an anthropologist, and in recent years I have been exploring a kind of American evangelical Christianity that seeks to enable its followers to know God intimately. These evangelicals talk about the Bible as if it is literally true, but they also use their imagination to experience the Bible as personally as possible. They talk about getting to know God by having coffee with God, or asking God what shirt they should wear in the morning. A man from Horizon Christian Fellowship in San Diego told me that “the Bible is a love story, and it is written to me.” It is a style of evangelical Christianity with many followers: perhaps a quarter of all Americans.