Source: Religion News Services
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA, USA: Only 59 percent of Americans believe in hell, compared with 74 percent who believe in heaven, according to the recent surveys from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The Rev. Fred Johns, pastor of Brookview Wesleyan Church in Irondale, Ala., said that pastors shy away from the topic of everlasting damnation. “It’s out of fear we’ll not appear relevant,” he said.
Pope John Paul II stirred up a debate in 1999 by describing hell as “the state of those who freely and definitely separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.” But some U.S. evangelicals expressed misgivings about the implication that hell is an abstract separation from God rather than a literal lake of brimstone and everlasting fire, a concept they favor.
[HPI note: Hindu cosmology encompasses celestial realms, where the Gods live, and also a lower plane of hellish suffering called the Narakaloka. But in the Hindu view no one is condemned forever, because of reincarnation and the natural evolution of all souls.]