Americans more accepting than expected

Charles M. Blow has a short but interesting column explaining that the vast majority of Americans believe that good people who are not Christians can go to heaven. The sub-plot of the article is the disbelief that some people experienced when they learned this finding. That suggests to me that the tenets of hard-right evangelicalism have come to be seen as normative, when in fact they are a minority position that happens to have a lot of political traction and a direct channel to the media.

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. As Alan Segal, a professor of religion at Barnard College told me: “We are a multicultural society, and people expect this American life to continue the same way in heaven.” He explained that in our society, we meet so many good people of different faiths that it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell. In fact, in the most recent survey, Pew asked people what they thought determined whether a person would achieve eternal life. Nearly as many Christians said you could achieve eternal life by just being a good person as said that you had to believe in Jesus.

Also, many Christians apparently view their didactic text as flexible. According to Pew’s August survey, only 39 percent of Christians believe that the Bible is the literal word of God, and 18 percent think that it’s just a book written by men and not the word of God at all. In fact, on the question in the Pew survey about what it would take to achieve eternal life, only 1 percent of Christians said living life in accordance with the Bible.

Now, there remains the possibility that some of those polled may not have understood the implications of their answers. As John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum, said, “The capacity of ignorance to influence survey outcomes should never be underestimated.” But I don’t think that they are ignorant about this most basic tenet of their faith. I think that they are choosing to ignore it … for goodness sake.

3 Responses to “Americans more accepting than expected”

1. fw says:

   December 28, 2008 at 8:28 pm

   “I don’t think that they are ignorant about this most basic tenet of their faith. I think that they are choosing to ignore it … for goodness sake.”

   I’ve often wanted to ask such people (and have at times, since I have met and know many of them), “If you must ignore basic tenets of your chosen and/or professed faith in order to do or believe what your gut tells you is right…then why do you remain in that “faith” at all? Shouldn’t the necessity to “defy” it tell you something…?”

   I suppose I should be pleased that so many Christians have apparently come over to offering me heaven, whether I want it or not. I would feel a lot more pleased if I actually believed in heaven or believed the question even mattered in the first place….

   Peace to all (and I mean that)

   PS Great blog here. I’ve been following silently for some time.
2. Rob R says:

   December 29, 2008 at 8:49 pm

   I would geuss that the reason so many Christians answered in the affirmative boils down to two reasons. One is because they have embraced the pop culture religious view of religious pluralism which suggests that there is no priviledged religious view. The other is that they have a good grasp of the concepts though flawed. I’ll explain. I would not have said yes to this question. I would not have said no. It’s a misleading question as far as Christian theology is concerned. The problem is that there is a claim here which is said to boil down to two views but really there are more. Can other religions lead one to heaven? I’d say no. So does that mean that everyone who is not a Christian or has never heard the gospel is hellbound and barred from heaven? Not in the slightest. Other religions cannot save anyone and for that matter, the religion of Christianity cannot save anyone. Yahweh saves and he has choosen to do so through the work of Jesus Christ. So basically, people can be saved from damnation through Jesus even if they don’t know him by name or his work in the flesh.

   How does this work? How does one live in order to escape from damnation through Jesus? The author mentioned that many of those polled said that people achieved a heavenly destination by living a good life. Although I feel that since luther, the protestant church has made too much of the apostle Paul’s distinction of works vs. faith and has misunderstood it (because it’s not about earning heaven vs. trusting God but rather it is how one gets their covenant identity), it is nevetheless the case that biblically speaking, you cannot earn your way to heaven. It belittles the nature of God’s grace and intentions for Jesus sacrifice. If we can earn our way to heaven then Jesus did not save us through the Cross and that’s not Christianity. HOWEVER, if someone leads a good life, it is evidence that they are responding positively to God’s salvific grace.

   Charles Blow suggests that American Christians may view the possibility of heaven for those outside of the faith as a result of their ignorance or willingness to ignore the basic tennets of their faith and their American hopes that good things can come to good people. This is not a new belief amongst Christians. It is a belief that is part of the ancient and orthodox faith that has been articulated by the early church fathers most notably Justin Martyr and has been articulated through the history of the church to some degree by people such as the reformer Zwingli, John Wesley, CS Lewis and even the greatest modern evangelist Billy Graham.

   Most importantly, a strong biblical case can be made for it. Peter, upon meeting Cornelius because of divine prompting, and prior giving Cornelius “a message through which [he] and all [his] household [would] be saved” (Acts 11:14)(that messege is the gospel), Peter exclaimed “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.” (Acts 10:34-35) Prior to this meeting between Cornelius and Peter, God appeared to Cornelius in a vision and said his prayers and alms giving had gone up before him as a memorial. Again, this is before Cornelius had become a Christian.

   Paul in Romans 2 spoke of Gentiles who live as if they had the law of God demonstrating that the law was written on their hearts. Paul in Acts 17 identified some of the claims of the subject of “Cleanthes hymn to Zeus” with Yahweh and says that the Greek alter to the unknown god was really to the God of Israel. Paul also states that God scattered the nations and determined the times and places where they would be “so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:26)

   So why evangelize if people can escape damnation without knowing the historical gospel? For too long, Christianity has been presented as a death cult that is only concerned with destinies after death and as an all or nothing deal. It’s not just about that but about life here and now, our relationship to God and to each other. Christianity is about a relationship to God and those come in degrees. The full salvation that Christ brings is not just about escaping death but about knowing God better and more deeply. God is personal and we know persons in degrees and we know persons best through history and through knowing their actions. And God wants us all to take part of this history which keeps unfolding.

   There is more that can be said about all of this but I hope what I said is sufficient to give a better picture on the issue.
3. bodhipaksa says:

   December 30, 2008 at 3:32 pm

   To me it simply boils down to the fact that the vast majority of people adopt the religion they were born into, or one like it. Adopting a religion is rarely (not always) a conscious choice, and often (not always) not much thought goes in to the actual doctrine. I suspect a vanishingly few Christians are familiar with the passages you mention, Bob, just as vanishingly few Buddhists in the east actually meditate.

   I mean:

   * A majority of Americans cannot name one of the four Gospels,
   * One in ten Americans believes that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, and
   * Only one-third knows that Jesus (rather than Billy Graham) preached the Sermon on the Mount.

   So when it comes to ethical questions, a lot of people are going to have to fall back on their gut instincts, and that will include notions like “fairness” that have nothing to do with the theological niceties and a lot to do (probably) with evolutionary psychology, or if you don’t buy that then a general pagan sensibility. People are forced to think whether it’s “fair” that people as good as or better than them will be excluded from heaven, and in their guts that often does feel wrong. The theology is way beyond many people (including myself).

   As to why people remain within their religions if they don’t know about or agree with the theology, that presupposes that theology is what people are after, when in fact they’re more likely to be interested in a sense of community, existential comfort, setting a good example for their kids, participating in a tradition, etc. Thus you can have, even, a majority of a church’s members disagreeing with major tenets of the church’s hierarchy (think Catholics and contraception, for example).

   Obviously theology (in the broadest sense) is important to a lot of people, myself included, but I’m afraid we’re likely to be amongst the dreaded “elites.” And even I would consider myself to be intellectually lazy to a high degree.