America’s fuzzy afterlife
According to a writer for Newsweek who really, really wants you to buy her book, Americans don’t know what to make of the afterlife. Furthermore, adherence to the orthodox doctrine of resurrection is on the decline, at least here in the U.S.:
Despite the insistence of the most conservative branches of all three Western religions on resurrection as an incontrovertible fact, most of us are circumspect. The number of Americans who say they believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ has dropped 10 points since 2003 to 70 percent, according to the most recent Harris poll; only 26 percent of Americans think that they’ll have bodies in heaven, according to a 1997 Time/CNN poll. Thanks to the growth here of Eastern religions, reincarnation—the belief that after death a soul returns to earth in another body—is gaining adherents. Nearly 30 percent of 2003 Harris poll respondents said they believed in reincarnation; of self-professed Christians, that number was 21 percent. Reincarnation and resurrection have, traditionally, been mutually exclusive. Among Christian conservatives, a private hope of reincarnation would be seen as not just illogical but heretical.
I’ve never really understood this current fascination with reincarnation. I suppose it allows people who can’t stomach the idea of eternal realms of punishment and reward to maintain some kind of faith that people are still going to get what’s coming to them.
For the modern man to abandon orthodox doctrines about the afterlife is one thing; for him to give up any hope that things are somehow going to be made right is quite a bit harder.
Tags: afterlife, heaven, resurrection
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