The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a survey about American’s religious beliefs, confirming our country’s religious beliefs are plumb crazy.

According to the survey, most of the people who identify with Evangelical Christianity think that there’s more than one way to interpret the Bible. Huh? And that there’s more than one way to get to ‘eternal life.’ Huh? *head scratch* These beliefs seem completely counter the most fundamental of Evangelical teachings.

First of all, thank God people believe this way. But, the do ironies abound. My protestant students, for instance, think the Catholics are just exactly like them, without understanding the basic conflict between Catholicism (those heathen idol worshipers) and Protestantism, never mind between Protestantism and fundamentalist Christianity.

Catholicism is a cult, according to most Protestant or Evangelical based religions, and many people just plain forget that Catholics were strung up by the KKK or put in camps by the Nazis. These contradictions are part of the reason why the Christian Right paradigm seems inconsistent.Or crazy. Or just “coalition politics” at its finest, perhaps.

In the MSNBC article on the study, there’s a great quote:

“The survey shows religion in America is, indeed, 3,000 miles wide and only three inches deep,” said D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist of religion.

Ain’t it the truth.

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