Faulty Easter faith

GURAT, France, March 14 (UPI) -- As Christianity's highest feast approaches, Western churchmen have reason for concern about the quality of Easter faith in Europe and the United States.

Easter faith is the conviction that as Christ is risen from the dead, so will all who believe in him have eternal life. It defines Christian doctrine more than any other theological tenet.

But on both sides of the Atlantic, opinion polls show that even church members are no longer sure of this.

In a recent survey of the California-based Barna group, a mere 25 percent of U.S. Catholics and mainline Protestants said there was definitely life after death. Only members of the Assemblies of God (81 percent), Pentecostal denominations (80 percent), non-denominational churches (76 percent) and Baptists (67 percent) were certain that death would not mean the end of their existence.

Now comes even more distressing news from Germany, one of whose chief export items before the advent of the Mercedes-Benz used to be sound theology. In the land of Luther, pollsters of the venerable Emnid Institute found that a mere 30 percent expressed certainty that their souls would live on once their bodies are gone.

A staggering 57 percent of a sample group of former East Germans termed the basic Christian message of the resurrection of the dead "wishful thinking," Chrismon, an evangelical magazine, reports in its current issue.

In the former West Germany, where the overwhelming majority of the citizens are still tax-paying members of a state-related church, Catholic or Protestant, 36 percent shared this view.

"This corresponds to the situation in France," Jean Joncheray, vice rector of the Catholic Institute (university) of Paris, told United Press International Thursday.

In France, which once prided itself with being the "first daughter of the Church," a poll conducted in 1994 revealed that 33 percent expected "everything to be over" at the moment of their death.

Another 36 percent hoped that "something" of themselves would survive. As in Germany today, six percent believed in reincarnation, and 20 percent said they would be raised from the dead.

Yet according to a fresh survey commissioned by the Christian newspaper La Croix, two-thirds of all Frenchmen declared themselves as Roman Catholics and two percent as Protestants.

Joncheray cautioned however that these figures could give readers a false impression. "Only eight percent of the Catholics practice their faith regularly," he said.

Nonetheless, La Croix's survey shows at least one hopeful sign: Although the percentage of Catholics in France had slipped dramatically from 81 percent in 1986 to 67 percent in 1994, it now seems to be slightly on the increase again. Last year, 69 percent professed their adherence to the Church of Rome, although the vast majority admitted to not attending Mass regularly.

Like many of his Catholic and Protestant colleagues in France and Germany interviewed over the last few months, Joncheray expressed satisfaction with the healthy state of academic theology taught in these countries.

This is a welcome change from the situation a few decades ago when divinity schools on both sides of the Atlantic experienced a drastic decline in theological standards.

"In the 1970s, for example, the question discussed at Princeton Theological Seminary was, 'What do you preach on Easter Sunday morning?'" said the Rev. Fred Anderson, now senior pastor of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York.

The inference was that at that period the "God is dead" doctrine was the preferred theological flavor of the season. So if God was dead, how can one proclaim Christ's resurrection -- and rejoice over the promise of one's own resurrection?

"Thank God this era is over," Anderson told UPI. What is left, though, is rampant catechetical ignorance in the Old World and the new.

In an ironic twist of events, the pervasive ignorance in religious matters among the young is beginning to trouble the political Left in Europe.

In France, Education Minister Jack Lang on Thursday accepted the proposal by Régis Debray, a former companion of the Argentine and Cuban revolutionary Ché Guévara, to introduce religious studies to the curriculum of public school education.

Also in France, 57 percent of a sample group of high school students between the ages of 15 and 18 told pollsters of the Catholic Newspaper La Vie that gaining knowledge of religious matters was a good thing.

In Germany, where religion courses are compulsory in public schools, students increasingly rate such classes among their most favorite.

And Gregor Gysi, the former East Germany's most prominent post-Communist politician -- who is now senator (minister) of finance in the state of Berlin -- recently said nothing scared him more than a godless society. At the same time, Gysi declared himself "still a heathen."

Religious ignorance is not confined to Europe, however. In the United States, a Barna study shows that only 37 percent of the population knows the meaning of the word, Gospel -- the good news of salvation only through Christ's sacrificial death and resurrection and a person's acceptance of Jesus as his or her personal savior.

And although 85 percent believe in the crucified and risen Christ, 39 percent reject the notion that he was actually physically resurrected.

Amazingly, even 35 percent of America's born-again Christians hold this view about a event historians worldwide are increasingly less inclined to dismiss as a myth than their peers a few generations ago.

Said E.M. Blaiblock, professor of Classics at Auckland University in New Zealand, "The resurrection of Christ is better authenticated than most of the facts of ancient history."