Sola Scriptura
The thing is – even the “literalist” Fundamentalists are, when you get down to it, doing an interpretation, based on their cultural and historic experience, of what the Scripture “really means”.
Sometimes, there is a situation where there may be a prefectly good social, human reason to abstain from some conduct – e.g. gambling, which can potentially be ruinous to a family. (Catholicism says gambling’s not a problem if conducted honestly, limitedly, and prudently, but it’s a vice if done to the detriment of your solvency. But they can do that because they have extra-scriptural bases for doctrine.) But if you’re Sola Scriptura you’d better have a biblical justification, even if only inferential. Some denominations’ opposition to gambling is based “Biblically” is that it represents acquiring wealth by means other than honest work.
The Bible, for instance, does not outlaw alcohol, it quite sensibly censures drunkenness and th associated behavior. Yet, even though in the Bible people become obviously drunk in various passages, many Fund’ists will go on at length to expain how when the Bible says “Jesus made wine” or Paul writes to Timothy “for health’s sake, avoid the water there, stick to wine” it really means unfermented must or grape jelly or what have you, based on research about food-preparation techniques of the time and the root of the Hebrew word for “vine”, so there must be no drinking at all. Yet these are the same people who will say that the prohibition against man/man sex is just that and not any reference to pagan temple practices.
The Bible, further, says clearly “praise the Lord with harps and cymbals, with trumpets and bells”. Yet various old denominations of strict Protestantism were against the use of instrumental music in church.
To this day I can’t understand, though, where the prohibition against dancing comes from. Righteous people are bustin’ grooves all across the Bible.
Speaking of other denominations with prohibitions that have alleged scriptural origins:
Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas nor their personal Birthdays, because they claim there are only two example of birthday revels in the Bible (Balthazar’s Feast in the Book of Daniel, and Herod Antipas’ in the Gospels) and both ended up very, very badly (kingdom destroyed by Medes; John’s head traded for a lapdance).
JW’s also interpret the prohibition on consuming a creature’s lifeblood as extending to outlawing blood transfusions, and IIRC that they also interpreted that plus the Noachic prohibition on taking members off a still-living creature as outlawing live-donor organ or tissue transplants (anyway, pretty hard to do a major transplant w/o transfusions, y’know).
