More people believe death is no finale

By David O'Reilly, Knight Ridder Newspapers

The film credits rolled, the darkness turned to light, and the three teen-age girls
who had shrieked through "The Sixth Sense" scurried out of the theater.
Behind them, strolling to the exits, Gene and Dolores Crawford agreed that the
summer blockbuster about a boy who "sees dead people" was scary indeed.
But on the ultimate question posed by the world's great religions and the
summer's hottest movies -- is there life after death? -- the Crawfords disagree.
"I'd like to believe there's something after this, but I really don't think so," said
Crawford, 53, a crew-cut CPA. Yet a "very strange experience 20 years ago"
steered Dolores Crawford to a very different belief.
Do we endure?
In the face of saber-toothed tigers, marauding armies, plague, famine and
doctors proffering leeches, humans have long comforted themselves with the
hope that something better follows.
But with earthly existence so much fun nowadays in rich, sex-saturated, air-
conditioned America, it stands to reason that most Americans would scoff at talk
of the hereafter, right?
Hardly.
More Americans probably believe in an afterlife than ever before in this century,
according to a new study by the Survey Research Center at the University of
California at Berkeley.
Among the surprises:
 Jewish belief in life after death has tripled in this century, from 19 percent
among those born in the first decade to 74 percent among those born in the
1960s.
 There is little difference in belief between liberal and conservative Protestants;
about 86 percent in every age group believe in an afterlife, and have done so for
decades.
 Belief among those calling themselves Roman Catholic, now at 83 percent,
has caught up with Protestants only in the most recent years.
 Even among adults who claim no religious affiliation, belief has increased from
44 percent to 58 percent since the mid-1970s.
 Call it Heaven, the Pure Land, Firdaws, the Other Side, or olam-haba, 82
percent of adult Americans today believe some aspect of them will endure beyond
their own big chill; that's 5 percentage points higher than the 77 percent reported
in every previous decade since pollster George Gallup began asking in the 1930s.

What explains this improbable trend?

The Rev. Andrew Greeley, coauthor of the study and director of the National
Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, suspects that the sheer
variety of religions here not only saturates American culture, but has propelled
denominations to preach, teach and reinforce belief with an alacrity not seen in
many other nations.
"Our hunch ... is that religious competition for the hearts and souls of
immigrants led to their vigorous socialization" into normative beliefs, he says.
While the promise of an afterlife is present in traditional Judaism and is central
to Christianity, Greeley noted that many Catholics and Jews emigrating to the
United States early in this century had limited education, including religious
education, and were hostile or indifferent to organized religion.
On their arrival to these shores, however, Catholic immigrants encountered an
entrenched Irish American clergy resolved to steer them onto the right path, i.e.,
rigorist, rosary-beaded, Mass-on-Sunday, meatless-Friday, Irish-styled
Catholicism.
To that end, the bishops here created a system of parishes, parochial schools,
Catholic labor organizations and social clubs that not only separated the new
arrivals from Protestantism but instilled orthodoxy and reinforced belief.
"What that did was raise the level of belief in life after death among the
immigrants," Greeley, a Catholic priest, said in a telephone interview. Belief grew
with each generation. "The upshot is greater orthodoxy among the children and
grandchildren than existed among the immigrants themselves."
The study further found that belief in life after death among Catholics who
graduated from college runs about 11 percentage points ahead of Catholics with
just a high school education, and 16 percentage points ahead of Catholics who
dropped out of high school.
Among Jews, however, the recent increase in belief seems to defy explanation,
according to Greeley and Michael Hout, a professor of sociology at the University
of California at Berkeley and coauthor of the survey.
A poll taken for the National Science Foundation in the mid-1970s showed that
only 19 percent of American Jews believed in life after death, but the same survey
in the mid-1990s showed the number had climbed to 46 percent. Among Jews in
their 30s, 74 percent now report they believe.
"It's an enigma," Hout said.
He and Greeley hypothesized that the rise would be explained by Jewish
intermarriage with Christians, or by what Hout called cultural "osmosis" as Jews
socialize with Christians.
"But what we found was that belief was highest among Jews married to Jews,"
said Hout. "It's something coming from Judaism."
The survey, whose findings will be published in the December issue of
American Sociological Review, did not include U.S. Muslims or practitioners of
Eastern religions.
Albert Lewis, rabbi emeritus of the Conservative Congregation Beth Sholom in
Cherry Hill, N.J., says that American Judaism is "without a doubt moving to the
right," and that his congregants now seem much more interested in the afterlife
than those of a generation ago.
He noted that Reform and Conservative Judaism, to which most American
Jews belong, were shaped by the Enlightenment movement of the 18th century,
which exalted reason and dismissed religious superstition.
Among the "superstitions" these two branches of Judaism have historically
downplayed is olam haba, the "world to come."
"But nowadays people are beginning to see the limits of science and they say,
'Is that all there is? There's got to be more.' "
The question of the afterlife is just one question that terminally ill people wrestle
with. Most of these people are not afraid of what awaits them, says the Rev.
Thomas Johnson-Medland, a Greek Orthodox priest and pastoral care
coordinator at Caring Hospice in the Philadelphia area.
"They worry about dying itself. 'Will it be painful? Will it be a hardship on my
family? Have I forgiven everybody? Has everybody forgiven me?' " said Johnson-
Medland.
Personal experience often shapes a person's belief in, or picture of, the
hereafter more than religion, he has found.
The Crawfords, interviewed outside "The Sixth Sense" at a Philadelphia area
movie theater, agreed on that much. Raised Roman Catholic in South
Philadelphia, Gene Crawford spent two of his high school years studying to
become a priest. He was still a believing Catholic when he went to Vietnam in the
mid-1960s, but the chaos of war convinced him that no loving God guided the
world.
"I held men dead in my arms and said, 'Why?' " Crawford recalled, shaking his
head.
But Dolores Crawford said her confidence in the life hereafter was affirmed 20
years ago, shortly after she had found a forgotten photo of her late father, holding
her as an infant. He had walked out on his family decades before. "He looked so
happy that I found myself thinking, 'I just don't understand why you didn't love
me,' " she recalled.
Two weeks later, her sister called.
"I have a message for you from Dad," she said, and explained that their father
had appeared to her in a dream. "I want you to give this message to Dolores," he
told her, and handed the sister an envelope. When she opened the dream
envelope, her sister said, the note inside read, "I love you."
"Isn't that weird?" Dolores Crawford asked with a laugh. "My sister said she had
never dreamed of him before. So that kind of convinced me that people live on,
and if you talk to them (the dead) they can comfort you."