Albert Mohler: Remodeling Hell -- Americans Redefine the Doctrine

Monday, August 18, 2008

Is belief in hell disappearing? "Absolutely," says Barnard College professor Alan Segal, author of Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion. Segal's remark is found within a news story released by Religion News Service. In "Belief in Hell Dips, But Some Say They've Already Been There," Charles Honey traces the transformation of hell in contemporary America.

The catalyst for Honey's article was the "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" released this summer by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. The data do indicate a shift in beliefs concerning hell. In the Pew study, just 59 percent of those surveyed indicated belief in a concept of hell "where people who have led bad lives, and die without being sorry, are eternally punished." the rest image