Animalman, to elaborate you said there were two ways of looking at the Bible To take it verbatum or to view it as sort of guidlines. I would say there are many more ways of looking at it there is of course where I would say the Catholic church and some protestant churches also fit where the Bible isn't enough, but where the church adds rules to scripture. There is of coursse those who view the scriptures as having no solid meaning only what one gleans from them, then there's the literal interpritation, but even that breaks into at least two catagories. There is the wooden litteralists who believe there is no room for interpretation, then the catagory of classical literealists (Where I would place myself and my tradition) where the scriptures are said to be taken literaly as they were intended. That is to say law is interpreted as law, metaphore as metaphore suggestion as suggestion and history as history, realiising that the scriptures were written in history to specific groups. When Paul writes to the Corinthians to say that women should cover thier heads, we need to realise that that book wasn't addressed directly to us in the modern church and need to ask "why would this be important to the Corinthians and how (or if) it applies to us today"
Sorry, that was a little long winded.
