In an Associated Press story found here, the following statistics reveal how pluralistic our multi-cultural melting pot has become.
Most Americans don’t feel their religion is the only way to eternal life.
The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a positive sign of growing religious tolerance, or disturbing evidence that Americans dismiss or don’t know fundamental teachings of their own faiths.
57% of evangelical church attenders said they believe many religious can lead to eternal life.
70% of Americans with a religious affiliation shared that view, and 68% siad there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their own religion.
Religion in America is, indeed 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep. There’s a growing pluralistic impulse toward tolerance and that is having theological consequences (D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University Sociologist of Religion).
More than one in four Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Orthodox Christians expressed some doubts about God’s existence, as did six in ten Jews.
Some Christians hold strongly to Jesus’ words as described in John 14:6: “I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Others emphasize the wideness of God’s grace.
Only 6 in 10 Catholics described God as “a person with whom people can have a relationship” – which the church teaches – while 3 in 10 described God as an ‘impersonal force’.
But when pastors of 8,000 member churches call The Shack, “one of the most remarkable books I’ve read in years (see this article)”, should we be surprised?
PC
Surprised? No. I would love to be surprised by that. Deeply saddened, yes.