The publication of a Pew Survey on American religion is being posted on many news sights and getting spun like cotton candy and if the statistics were true, than the Unitarian-Universalists should be the largest religious body in the U.S.
"America remains a nation of believers, but a new survey finds most Americans don't think their religion is the only way to eternal life, even if their faith tradition teaches otherwise."
St. John 3:16 - For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
St. John 14:6 - Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
"The findings, revealed Monday in a survey of more than 35,000 adults, can either be taken as a sign of growing religious tolerance or evidence that Americans dismiss or don't know fundamental teachings of their own faiths."
I think the reasoning for this result can be summed-up thus.
1) Ineffective or shoddy evangelism, does the minister believe or understand what he is preaching, does he know what is in the Gospels or is it a quick power-point presentation of the warm and fuzzy and politically correct portions of the teachings of our Lord?
2) The replacement of a theologically and dogmatically sound catechisms with the "meet-and-greet-supper-club-are you sure you want to be a Christian?" program or a catechism focused on social justice and environmentalism and not on salvation through Jesus Christ.
3) The lack of an instructional office and the recitation of the Decalogue or the Creeds unstained by a new translation that sneaks in post-modern theology.
IMHO, the only way to correct this slide into luke-warm belief is to deliver a message to believers and potential converts, that is rooted in Scripture and tradition and is delivered in a convicted and convincing manner.
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C. S. Lewis has been teaching the children who read The Last Battle, the last book in the Narnia series, that the pagan Calormene soldier was credited with worshiping Aslan all along even though he did not know it.
Lewis also expressed this more explicitly in Mere Christianity on page 64:
"But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those that who know Him can be saved through Him."
and on page 209:
"There are people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might say he still believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points."
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