Rod Dreher is aghast at the fact that Americans don’t assent to the views of “orthodox” Christianity. The problem that many secular and religious people on the extremes don’t get (the anti-devout and the devout) is the cognitive complexity, and, frankly, the fundamental incoherency of the religious beliefs of most humans. In The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation the authors report survey data from the early 1980s which shows that most American Christians would not definitely deny that Hindus could achieve salvation:
| Missouri Lutheran | South. Baptist | Assemblies of God | All Protestants | Roman Catholics | |
| Being of the Hindu religion would definitely prevent salvation | 40 | 32 | 41 | 14 | 2 |
(the above data are not totally comparable to the Pew results, but they show the broad extent of these sentiments a generation ago)
Dreher may be more rigorous than most (he’s been a member of three Christian denominations, as well as not being religious), but even he isn’t immune to putting rigor to the side when needful. Rod Dreher did not dig deep into reasoned critiques of Catholic doctrines until those criticisms might be some utility. This is not atypical.
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