Evangelicals increasingly tolerant of other paths

At a meeting with Sen. Barack Obama recently, the Rev. Franklin Graham asked the presidential hopeful a burning question: Did he think Jesus was the way, or merely a way?

For Graham, -- president of the Billy Graham Evangelic Association and Samaritan's Purse, both based in North Carolina -- the answer was critical. Through the ages, Christian evangelicals have affirmed that eternal life is available only through belief in Jesus. This is why they send missionaries around the globe and translate the New Testament into every known language.

For many evangelicals, the exclusivity of Jesus is the linchpin of their faith.

"Anyone who claims to be an evangelical and who says it's possible to go to heaven other than through faith in Jesus Christ is not an evangelical," said Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest.

But according to accounts of those who were there, Obama's response to Graham may be more in line with where evangelicals are today.

"Jesus is the only way for me," Obama said. "I'm not in a position to judge other people."

A recent survey of 35,000 Americans showed that 70 percent of Americans and 57 percent of Christian evangelicals believe there are many roads to eternal life.

The survey, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, showed that evangelicals -- defined as those belonging to evangelical denominations, such as the Southern Baptist Convention -- are remarkably accepting of religions other than their own.

"I can affirm the particularities of my belief in Jesus and in the Gospels and affirm the idea that there are other paths," said Daniel Pryfogle, son and grandson of Baptist preachers and the owner of Signal Hill, a Cary-based consulting group that works with churches on leadership and communication.

"That will be hard for others to hold together. But I think we can do it and say, 'This is evangelical.' "

To Greg Smith, co-author of the Pew survey, the results are consistent with the overall finding that Americans are not narrow-minded about religion. They're open to a range of views and respect neighbors who espouse different faiths. On another question, for example, the survey found that 53 percent of evangelicals believe there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their faith.

Nevertheless, Smith said, the extent to which Christian evangelicals have abandoned the exclusive claims to eternal life deserves further study.

"We intend to go into the field and probe this question in greater depth," Smith said.

'A cosmopolitanism'

D. Michael Lindsay, a sociologist of religion at Rice University who has studied evangelicals, said the Pew survey reflects an emerging evangelical center that rejects an easy identification with the religious right and is no longer confined to a church subculture outside mainstream society.

"There's a cosmopolitanism in the evangelical tradition that wasn't there 20 years ago," said Lindsay, author of "Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite," (Oxford University Press). "It seeks to build bridges."

This evangelicalism doesn't want to appear intolerant of others and seeks accommodation with contemporary society. It may best be represented among emerging churches that hold theological discussions in bars, prefer to minister in urban areas and display a genuine concern for the environment and the poor.

These evangelicals haven't abandoned the core tenets of their faith. They still believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus and in the literal truth of the Bible.