If you believe in that sort of thing, do you think people from a range of religions can get into heaven? As a recent Charles Blow op-ed in the NY Times discussed, at least sixty five percent of Americans do (Hat tip Dave C. for sharing this). I’ve actually discussed this Pew study before, but subsequent to the initial results they went back to determine what people meant by other religions. Here’s the results to that query. Short version, some 60% of Americans first and foremost think that Catholics, Protestants, and to a slightly lesser extent Jews are covered. At around 50% Muslims, Hindus, and Agnostics are also good to go. I’m actually a bit surprised Muslims didn’t do a bit better given the whole monotheism thing. Happily even Atheists get more than 40% of the population, presuming they’d be interested in heaven were it an option.
I like Blow’s analysis:
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…
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.
Having been through Sunday school, I’m well aware of the range of views regarding justification. The short version of the official Lutheran view is justification via faith alone, but that good works are the fruit of such a faith. The simplest way of reconciling that view is probably just to consider faith sufficient but not necessary, it still disagrees with some of the verses but doesn’t undercut the doctrine of forgiveness.
In any event, Douthat had an eloquent post up where he argues on the meaning of Christmas and the larger Christian story:
It recounts a series of events that, if real, tells us something profound about the nature of God, and His relationship to His creatures, that we couldn't have been expected to understand or accept in precisely the same way without the Gospel narratives.
Of course a philosopher could have come up with the formulation that God is Love without the assistance of the Gospel According to Saint John, just as Aristarchus of Samos could draw up the heliocentric hypothesis without the assistance of a telescope.
Similarly other people duplicated the invention of the telescope and a love centric philosophy similarly doesn’t require a god at all. Nonetheless, this, and the specific prominence of forgiveness, is the core appeal of Christianity for me. Douthat correctly points out that the emphasis on love enhances the critique that there is too much suffering in the universe for good omnipotence.
In any event, for all of these flaws, the emphasis on love seems to have convinced a large percentage of those surveyed that good people will basically be okay, regardless of what the official theological line is. I for one take that as a tiding of comfort and joy.
Comments