Judging by the polls of modern Americans’ beliefs and practices, there is a much greater diversity of opinion about salvation even among the adherents of evangelicalism and fundamentalism than is evident rom the confident, insistent voices of their leaders and authors.

In 2005, for example, Newsweek magazine and Beliefnet questioned 1,004 Americans about their worship and beliefs. Some important statistics from that survey indicate that only 38 percent of respondents practice their religion today as they did while they were growing up.

Only 39 percent said they practice their religion to forge a personal relationship with God, while 57 percent said they do it to help them be better persons, to find peace and happiness, or to connect with something larger than themselves.

An astounding 68 percent of the evangelical Protestant respondents said they believe that a person who doesn’t share their religious beliefs can go to heaven while 83 percent of non-evangelical Protestants and 91 percent of Roman Catholics believed this.

from The Changing Shape of Our Salvation