[Assam] Heaven for the Godless? - NYT

[Ram Sarangapani]

A religious revivalism?

Interesting survey. Highlights mine.

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 December 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Heaven for the Godless? By CHARLES M. BLOW

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.

E-mail chblow at nytimes.com