In spite of the Gallup poll's pervasive and helpful interest in American attitudes towards religion, it usually skirts over some crucial aspects of American religious life. According to the poll, the numbers of Americans who believe in life after death is amazingly high: seven Americans out of ten believe in life after death, practically identical with the figures of half a century ago, a figure which seems to dispute any notion that Americans are losing their faith or that our society is secularizing. (George jun Gallup., and Jim Castelli 1989)
We do not have equivalently detailed data about belief in resurrection. Indeed, the failure of the pollsters to ask detailed questions about this critical doctrine may hide where the secularization has taken place. Anecdotal evidence from pastors, as well as my own observations of both contemporary Jews and Christians, leads me to think that the congregants of liberal and main-line churches, like the equivalent synagogues, have very ambivalent ideas about the doctrine of resurrection, both as applied to Jesus and as anticipated for the righteous and faithful; while conservative and fundamentalist groups put not just life after death but resurrection at the centre of their beliefs. Indeed, Reform Judaism, in order to show itself to be a rational religion based on the revealed law of the Jews, has removed all references to resurrection, in the liturgy. Conversely, Moses Mendelssohn considered the concept of the immortality of the soul to be a significant part of rational religion.
This is a very strange state of affairs in American life, because both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism put belief in the resurrection, not just life after death, at the centre of their beliefs and creeds. Interestingly, the earliest parts of the Bible do not concern any life after death worth having; at times the........
