In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life...This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. Jesus said so: “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that...The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they?
So in August, Pew asked the question again. (They released the results last week.) Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them...And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go.
What on earth does this mean?
One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith.
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Friday, January 02, 2009
Heaven for the Godless?
A piece from Charles M. Blow:
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My take on this (as a Catholic who also believes in science and evolutionary theory according to Darwin) is that the evangelicals imagine that they can see who Jesus will and will not save, and they have a narrow and naive view of the paths that lead to and through Jesus. It's terribly arrogant of them, really. Who are they, to say whom Jesus will count as sheep and whom as goats?
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