Survey Looks at American Religious Beliefs

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

Survey Looks at American Religious Beliefs

 

UNITED STATES, October 10, 2002: In a new survey of American religious beliefs, conducted by the conservative Christian Barna Research Group, 44 percent of those surveyed said, "The Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths," while 38 percent of Americans disagreed with that idea. George Barna, president of the Ventura, California, based marketing research company, apparently alarmed at the results, said he thinks the results reflect an increasing inclusivity about faith among many Americans. "Christians have increasingly been adopting spiritual views that come from Islam, Wicca, secular humanism, the Eastern religions and other sources," he said in a statement. "Because we remain a largely Bible illiterate society, few are alarmed or even aware of the slide toward syncretism -- a belief system that blindly combines beliefs from many different faith perspectives."

[theist]

The Bible is inadequate to explain many common questions that naturally arise in peoples mind.So people search elsewhere.This is good if they encounter Eastern vaisnavism,

but the danger is there is so much mayavadi nonsense out there that that is what they generally pick up.

[Jahnava Nitai Das]

But even then, sometimes that leads them to develop more peaceful and nonviolent lifestyles, and many will later get exposed to Vaishnava teachings.

 

I know of many devotees who first had eastern "gurus" like Yogananda, or Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, etc. As they become more serious, Krishna guides them to bhakti.