The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life determined that 70% of Americans polled believe, as of June 2008, that those of other religions might find “eternal life” after death.  Two months later, a repetition of the survey brought similar results, with the added specificity that atheists and people of nearly all religions were expected to be eligible for redemption alongside the people surveyed. 

 

Charles Blow’s column in the New York Times searches briefly for the cause of this magnanimity in the minds of those who participated in the poll.  The column’s brevity is caused by the simplicity of Blow’s answer: “I don’t think that they [the 70% of participants] are ignorant about this most basic tenet of their faith [i.e., the teaching that through Christ is the only path to heaven].  I think that they are choosing to ignore it…for goodness sake.”

 

First, I think it is important to establish who the responders to the poll were—or can be assumed to be.  The same polling institute lists 78.4% of Americans as Christians and 1.7% as Jewish, the two largest groups (other than “unaffiliated,” at 16.1%).  Because the polls taken in the summer of ’08 were aimed at “Americans”—not any particular demographic therein—I think it is safe to conclude that the people who answered the polls were mostly Christians.

 

There is probably a tendency to credit our modern era of tolerance with this display of Christian fellow feeling towards all.  And, there is indeed a great deal owed to the understanding of other religions and the acceptance of other systems of thought that developed in the 20^th century, mostly in schools and colleges.  But, we cannot claim to have invented this goodwill in any one lifetime, particularly not in the recent past.  For instance, even William Langland, the 14^th century Christian poet, writes that the pagan Roman emperor Trajan is saved without mentioning Christ, only through good deeds.

 

Blow attributes the survey’s encouraging findings to another set of poll results: a minority of Christians believe in literal interpretation of the Bible.  But even this explanation cannot be inhered in our era.  The Christian tradition has long since been influenced by people who take great liberties with texts, most notably, Milton, who said that he wrote his poetry and theology based on his own inner sense of the scripture, which he said is present in everyone.

 

Blow writes:

 

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?

 

Here, Blow is being par with as his undefined “evangelicals” about ignoring the actual Christian tradition.  Yes, there have been and are intolerants and bigots in the ranks of Christianity.  But Pew Forum’s findings should not be a surprise.  The astonishment Blow affects—“what on earth does this mean?”—is a good indication of the infamy of the Christian tradition.  But, in this case, it is infamy undeserved, and vilification of a majority simply because it is a majority.

 

To see Charles Blow’s column, Heaven for the Godless: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/opinion/27blow.html?pagewanted=print