We can be more general than that. It wasn't really until the fundamentalist movement that people felt inclined to defend the literal truth of the Bible. Catholi

We can be more general than that. It wasn't really until the fundamentalist movement that people felt inclined to defend the literal truth of the Bible. Catholics historically (going back to Augustine) have believed that parts of the Bible like the creation account in Genesis are allegorical rather than literal. They wouldn't have gone as far as Jefferson (obviously) but it's sort of a myth that Christians have always felt the need to defend the literal truth of everything in the Bible.