WASHINGTON (ABP) — A massive survey of Americans’ religious views shows that Baptists, like the overall population, generally are socially tolerant of other faiths.
It also suggests that most Americans and most Baptists are, effectively, universalists.
The latest results are the second set of findings released from the United States Religious Landscape Survey, released June 23 by the Washington-based Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The survey showed large majorities of Americans favor the statement “Many religions can lead to eternal life.” Fewer agreed that: “My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life.”
Tolerance reigned across all major faith categories, including large majorities of Catholics, mainline Protestants, evangelicals, Southern Baptists, African-American Baptists, and members of congregations affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.
Smaller majorities of Americans and Baptists favored the assertion, “There is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of my religion.”
“Although many Americans are highly religious, we found they are not particularly dogmatic about their approach to faith,” said John Green, the Pew Forum’s senior fellow in religion and politics. “We believe that this non-dogmatic approach to faith is consistent with the great diversity of American religion, which this report describes in great detail.”
On the “one true faith” question, 70 percent of all Americans affiliated with religious traditions said there were multiple routes to eternal life. Among all Protestants, the figure was only slightly lower — at 66 percent.
Those who identified as members of evangelical churches were slightly more evenly divided on the question – with 57 percent affirming multiple faiths’ access to heaven and 36 percent insisting that their faith was the only true one.
But respondents who identified themselves as Southern Baptists were more reflective of the general population’s views on the subject: 61 percent said many religions could lead to a positive hereafter, while 33 percent said their faith was the only route to salvation.
American Baptists were slightly more universalist, with 73 percent affirming the multiple-routes-to-heaven assertion and 22 percent favoring a more exclusivist view.
But some religion reporters quibbled with the survey’s framing of the universalism question — which didn’t define what the questioners meant by “faith” or “eternal life.”
“I am being a bit picky here, but I suspect that if you asked a lot of people that Pew Forum question today, they would think of the great world religions. But many Christians would think more narrowly than that,” wrote veteran religion reporter Terry Mattingly in a June 24 posting on GetReligion.org, a blog that analyzes the secular media’s coverage of religion. “’What is your religion?’ ‘I’m a Baptist, a Nazarene, an Episcopalian, a Catholic.’ ‘Can people outside of your religion be saved?’ ‘Of course.’”
“This is not the same thing, for many, as saying that they believe that salvation is found outside faith in Jesus Christ.”
The survey results were the second set of data from a groundbreaking survey, conducted last year. It interviewed more than 35,000 Americans about their religious affiliations and views on religious and social questions. The first set was released earlier this year.
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Read more
Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey interactive website
http://religions.pewforum.org/
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