Do a persons views about the Bible matter?
Next, they asked if their view of the Bible matters. They were particularly interested in whether Americans who viewed the Bible as the “literal word of God” had different views than those who viewed the Bible as “inspired, but not literal” book. They hypothesized that people who viewed the Bible literally would be more likely to have more conservative views. The results indicated otherwise. Stokes and Ellison found that both groups were similar in their view that divorce laws were too lax. In short, it appears that the general belief that the Bible as an important book, either inspired or literal, did not make a difference in attitudes towards divorce. Does church attendance matter? Lastly, they asked if church attendance itself matters. Here they wanted to find out whether it was beliefs about religion in general or church attendance that was a better predictor of divorce beliefs. Their results indicated that church attendance was the strongest predictor of what a person thought abou
