A month ago some bloggers were mooting whether Barack Hussein Obama was a Christian at all due to his heterodox beliefs. Well, we now know how it was that the majority Americans voted for this avowed Christian non-Christian: most American Christians are not really Christian! A new Pew Survey reports that 52% of American Christians believe some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life. Denominational breakdown below the fold.
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Jest aside, there’s obviously a difference between thinking someone’s faith is phony and thinking someone’s going to burn. It’s pretty silly to call the two together the only true Christianity.
What does the asterisk mean, by the way – “Based on respondents who are affiliated with a religion and who say ‘many religions can lead to eternal life.'” Is that the whole poll?
Is that the whole poll?
I did provide you the link…. FWIW, only ~85% of Americans are affiliated with a religion, of whom ~95% are Christian. It would be strange to ask those who are not affiliated with a religion if people of other religions are going to hell or not, right? 🙂
@David Hume
Yeah, sorry, I didn’t see it was linked in the Beliefnet post – I think you may have repeated the same link twice.
I didn’t mean unaffiliated folk – I was just too stupid to pay attention to what 52% meant in your intro.
@Tony
Ah, sorry about that. Link fixed!
Both of the recent Popes have made statements suggesting that they believe Jews and/or Muslims can go to Heaven without believing in Jesus; see this page for some details. Other links:
http://www.traditioninaction.org/religious/m012rpRatzingerInMosque.html
http://www.carm.org/catholic/muslims.htm (a page which resorts to claiming that the Catholic catechism must be flawed because it seems to imply that Muslims can saved.)
As I’ve expressed here and in other places, I’m of the opinion that Americans of many religious “persuasions” are far less religiously “persuaded” than would be indicated merely by their affiliation. I believe the duly collected numbers include very many of the atheist and agnostic varieties and that the principal reason they don’t announce their views is fear of loss of social network benefits that might be closed off were they more candid.
If there were some way to know the actual “hearts” of the individual religious folks, the numbers developed might correlate certain interesting traits as between the members of different creeds; as that is not possible, those same numbers tell us almost nothing (and certainly not anything “scientifically” informative or useful).
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Technically speaking, I was under the impression that most Christians believed in eternal life no matter hat you believed, it was the location of where you would spend that eternity that was at issue.
Why does this matter? Many Jews, for example, take umbrage at statements by some Evangelicals and others that Jesus is the exclusive way to salvation. But Jews don’t believe that! Why should it matter to them? Does it affect their social or political lives? Surely, their sense of worth does not depend on opinions about salvation!
Why does this matter?
Follow the first link. The rest of your comment totally misses the point.
Roger is quite right. The set of core beliefs that make one a Christian are set out in the Nicene creed (also the Apostles’ creed). You will note, if you look at it, that belief that all others will go to hell, is not there. Indeed, Christians believe that everyone who is saved is saved through Jesus Christ and that the best way to get to know him is to become a Christian. God can and will save whomever he wishes. There are certainly many evangelical and “fundamentalist” bodies that think otherwise but there is lots of room for diverging opinions. Such divergence hardly qualifies one as not being a Christian.
I wonder if the atheists would benefit from some rebranding. Maybe the term itself hits off a hot button and if you called atheists nonbelievers, maybe the numbers would be better–maybe not. People who had no religious belief could be effectively atheists I would imagine and they seem to come off better in the above info. I scanned the Pew article but didn’t get into the weeds, so I apologize if I missed something.
Mike, religious people often equate “atheist” with a variety of baggage that goes well beyond simple disbelief in dieties. Some examples include:
– Someone who believes in God but hates God.
– Devil-worshipping Satanist.
– Hedonistic, baby-murdering, drug-abuser.
– “Evolutionst” with “faith” in science.
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