He was literally in the belly of the beast

Here's a favorite memory regarding the word "literally". This was one of those times when you wish the person were misusing the word. I grew up Methodist, but my congregation was a really conservative one. The Methodist church would sometimes send us pastors that were a little more liberal than folks would have liked. When I was about 16, they sent us a new associate pastor/youth minister. Soon after she arrived, parents were concerned that she might be too liberal for their teenage kids. There was a big meeting with her -- couched as welcome and fellowship. A chief concern was whether she would be teaching us that everything in the Bible was literally true. Of course, these Bible literalists pick and choose what's literal and what isn't. One father there told the pastor that he wanted her to present everything from the Bible as historically, literally true; he gave the example of Jonah and the whale. He said he wanted her to teach us that a man named Jonah was literally swallowed by a whale and lived through it to become a prophet/missionary.

The pastor handled the meeting with aplomb, like a progressive, subtle John Roberts. And over the next few years proceeded to present biblical meaning to us in ways our parents would not have appreciated. Her final Sunday at our church was "Youth Sunday," and as a group we went all out to report to the congregation that God might be a girl. She now runs a B&B in Arkansas, and I'm an atheist.