New Scripps-Howard poll: Only 36 percent of Americans believe in the resurrection of the body.
I should note, this has less to do with lack of belief in an afterlife as one assumes on first blush: most Americans simply believe their "souls will rise" upon death, and "I'll fly away." This points out a need for catechesis among Christians in general; I suspect Orthodox statistics are not that far off from those of conservative evangelicals.
Isn't that absolutely tragic? Yet we sing:
ReplyDeleteThis body in the grave we lay
There to await that solemn day
When God Himself shall bid it rise
To mount triumphant to the skies.
And so to earth we now entrust
What came from dust and turns to dust
And from the dust shall rise that Day
In glorious triumph o'er decay.
It reminds me of something a secular professor I had once said about the average belief in soul vs. bodily resurrection: "Scratch a Christian, and you will find a Platonist."
ReplyDeleteThank you for the beautiful hymn quotation. I know you are LCMS and hence believe when we're in Heaven, we'll be singing out of TLH, "the red book." :)
this remembers me same kind of poll in France some 3 or 4 years ago. The average was the same. But worse in fact : they had only questionned people giving themselves as "convinced Christians"...
ReplyDeleteKyrie eleison
Jean-Michel
http://www.orthodoxe.be