American Evangelicals - Pew Forum Survey

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(Sorry if this has already been discussed, but i didn't see any search results about the topic.)

I was preparing for a Bible study a few weeks ago and was reading Acts 4:12, thinking about the exclusivity of salvation through Christ. It brought to mind news stories in June about the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life's survey finding that the majority of American Evangelicals believed that salvation can be found in other religions.

Wanting details, i went online and looked around. The Pew Forum interviewed over 35,000 people in the US, including over 9,000 people considered "evangelical" (were attending evangelical churches). And yes, their data reports that 57% of the Evangelicals surveyed, agreed with the statement: "Many religions can lead to eternal life". This is opposed to only 36% who agreed with the alternate statement: "My religion is the one, true faith leading to eternal life".

While that percentage is already pretty alarming, what I found even more disturbing was that 86% of the "Evangelicals" surveyed agreed with the statement: "Do you think there is a heaven, where people who have lead good lives are eternally rewarded?" (vs. 6% no, 5% other, 2% don't know or refused to answer). Salvation by works??? What a sad state our "evangelical" churches are in...

--alex

Link to the Pew Forum survey:
Statistics on Religion in America Report -- Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

 

[Southern Presbyterian]

Hmmmm.

I wish I could say that this is surprising news.

 

[Ex Nihilo]

what I found even more disturbing was that 86% of the "Evangelicals" surveyed agreed with the statement: "Do you think there is a heaven, where people who have lead good lives are eternally rewarded?" (vs. 6% no, 5% other, 2% don't know or refused to answer). Salvation by works??? What a sad state our "evangelical" churches are in...

I think the situation is bad, but this question is very badly worded. I suspect a lot of people were responding "yes" to the "Do you think there is a heaven" part, and were just not thinking about the last half.

 

[asc]

what I found even more disturbing was that 86% of the "Evangelicals" surveyed agreed with the statement: "Do you think there is a heaven, where people who have lead good lives are eternally rewarded?" (vs. 6% no, 5% other, 2% don't know or refused to answer). Salvation by works??? What a sad state our "evangelical" churches are in...

I think the situation is bad, but this question is very badly worded. I suspect a lot of people were responding "yes" to the "Do you think there is a heaven" part, and were just not thinking about the last half.

Yes, after looking at the Pew Forum information some more, it was worded awkwardly because the information the Pew Forum people were trying to get at was, how many people believe in heaven (as opposed to no afterlife or other kinds of afterlife)? By definition, the Pew Forum people must think heaven = place where good people go after they die. But nevertheless, i still think it shows how weak the American chuches have become for so many evangelicals to agree to such a statement.

--alex

 

[DMcFadden]

Inartful or not, broad evangelicalism is just as confused as the pew people find it to be.

Here is a formula for obtaining the kinds of numbers the Pew people found among evangelicals:

Abandon sola scriptura in favor of "Christian experience" +

quit preaching doctrinally in favor of revivalistic existential themes +

send your best and brightest students off to ape the liberal scholars in the academy and prostitute themselves in a craven "me too" way in order to obtain the approbation of the scholarly community +

disconnect church practice from historic confessional boundaries +

have the leading evangelical seminaries ridicule traditional theological doctrines +

confuse lay people with a plethora of translations (useful enough in themselves, but devastating to a shared text of the Bible as Scripture) +

continue the trajectory of "revival" from the doctrinally Calvinistic First Great Awakening, through the Finneyesque Pelagian pragmatism regarding "means," to the heavy emotionality of the Pentecostal practice, to the emphasis on miracles of healing in place of evangelism in the Todd Bentley Lakeland "Revival" +

get some of the younger theologians to jump on the postmodern bandwagon and become its cheerleaders +

get evangelical pillars like J.R.W. Stott to come out as an annihilationist +

promote "evangelical feminism" as so obvious that anything else represents bigotry +

find a way to erase the differences between evangelical Christianity and the Roman Church (e.g., start a group and call it, say, Evangelicals and Catholics Together) +

deny doctrines of imputation and become proficient in speaking the language of the NPP +

develop an "ecology of relationships" with Islam

EQUALS

The Evangelical of 2008

 

[Pergamum]

Yes, poorly worded question (2 questions): "Do you think there is a heaven, where people who have lead good lives are eternally rewarded?"

If I only had the option to answer yes or no I might answer yes to this too, because there IS a heaven.

 

[wturri78]

Just a thought on poorly worded questions...

If you ask many people "What's your religion" they might well respond "Baptist," or "Methodist," or "Catholic" etc. Is it possible that many here who consider themselves evangelical were agreeing that many denominations or churches within Christianity can "lead to heaven" and not necessarily that mutually exclusive world religions lead there? I don't doubt that a good many evangelicals do believe the latter, but 57% seems awfully high...

 

[DMcFadden]

If you consider the Barna poll statistics over a very long time, you see that the cluelessness is not merely a artifact of poor survey phraseology (Welcome to The Barna Group!).

While I consider Barna's views dangeous insofar as they have been taken as "Gospel" by too many evangelical pastors (now even leading to foolish notions of dispensing with "church" all together in favor of spiritual life coaching!!!), his skill at running scientifically valid and reliable surveys is pretty well established.

 

[asc]

If you consider the Barna poll statistics over a very long time, you see that the cluelessness is not merely a artifact of poor survey phraseology (Welcome to The Barna Group!).

While I consider Barna's views dangeous insofar as they have been taken as "Gospel" by too many evangelical pastors (now even leading to foolish notions of dispensing with "church" all together in favor of spiritual life coaching!!!), his skill at running scientifically valid and reliable surveys is pretty well established.

Funny that you mentioned Barna because I was already looking at their website to get some comparative data.

A big difference between the Pew Forum and Barna is how they define "evangelical". The Pew Forum categorized people as evangelical based on what church denomination they "identify with most closely". This means that 28% of the people identified as "evangelical" only attend church a few times a year or even less. And it means that the Pew considered 26% of the US population to be evangelical.

The Barna Group on the other hand only considers 8% of the US population to be evangelical because they catagorize people based not on evangelical church affiliation but on an affirmation of 9 basic Christian statements, such as "the Bible is accurate in all it teaches" and "eternal salvation is only possible through grace and not works".

 

[skellam]

Unfortunately, the word 'Evangelical' has ceased to be a useful term in the Christian lexicon. The usage of the word in today's society embraces such a wide variety of beliefs and practices that it does not convey much meaning.

 

[Casey]

While that percentage is already pretty alarming, what I found even more disturbing was that 86% of the "Evangelicals" surveyed agreed with the statement: "Do you think there is a heaven, where people who have lead good lives are eternally rewarded?" (vs. 6% no, 5% other, 2% don't know or refused to answer). Salvation by works??? What a sad state our "evangelical" churches are in...

As others have already pointed out, this question is poorly worded. I believe the saints will be eternally rewarded for their good works in heaven. But of course it isn't our good works that get us to heaven. And unbelievers, technically speaking, can't do good works. So the question isn't very clear.