More Heaven than Hell #
The Boston Globe ideas section has some interesting details about Americans’ beliefs about heaven and hell. For myself, I’d always thought each necessary for the existence of the other.
The Pew survey, significant for the breadth and depth made possible by its unusually large 35,000-person sample, found that 74 percent of Americans say they think there is a heaven, “where people who have led good lives are eternally rewarded,” while just 59 percent think there is a hell, “where people who have led bad lives, and die without being sorry, are eternally punished.”
…there are peculiarly American characteristics to this emerging hell gap: an insistent optimism, perhaps a kind of cultural self-contentedness, and a tolerance born of diversity that makes damning the other more problematic.
… Mormons are the most likely to believe in heaven, but just average in their belief in hell. The biggest believers in hell are evangelical Protestants, African-American Protestants, and Muslims.