“There are lots of religions and I’m not sure only ONE has to be the right way.”

Across our focus groups we heard people say they are happy to leave Christians alone in our beliefs, even if those beliefs are delusions. A man in Phoenix said, “If they want a false hope, or they need some sort of hope in their life, Santa Claus, to get through, I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

A few indicated they might be open to developing some sort of faith in their own time and way. One guy cracked, “If I wake up tomorrow and see the Virgin Mary in my pancake and decide that this is something I’ve been missing out of my life since I’ve been born and I want to learn the practices of Christianity and all that, conversion is something that’s my decision and I’m fine with that.”

But there was a universal boundary not to be crossed. It was wrong for Christians to advocate their faith, especially the claim that Jesus is the only way to reach God. The guy waiting for the face of Mary to appear in his flapjacks said this:

“What I don’t like is it’s saying that they believe that the only way to Heaven is by being born again and accepting Jesus Christ. That I don’t like because if I feel that even though there are elements of Christianity that I identify with and I like, but there are elements of Buddhism that I also identify with. So, I don’t really think that I belong to any organized religion but I do feel spiritual, I feel a connection to God. When I pass I want to be with God. I want to be in Heaven that I believe in. Having someone tell me, ‘Oh, no, no, no you think you’re going to have a relationship with God but unless you’re born again and accept Jesus, that’s not happening for you.’ That I don’t like.”

Many people in our focus groups had fundamental disagreements with the Christian faith about who goes to heaven or hell:

San Francisco woman: “I’m comfortable not knowing what happens when we die, that sort of thing. That’s my stance. I guess I’m agnostic.”

Phoenix woman: “If Jeffrey Dahmer was on his last dying breath and was honestly, truly sorry in his heart, that he’d get let into the gates of heaven and sit down at the table and eat with all of us people that have tried to do right…. I don’t care how much he asks for forgiveness, I don’t want to sit at the table with him. If there’s a third option I want to go there.”

People who spoke up in our groups clearly want freedom to pick and choose from various spiritual beliefs, keeping what they consider valuable and relevant and rejecting the rest. Like people scooping up food at a buffet, they consider it their right to take it or leave it:

Austin guy: “I also don’t think it’s necessary to believe in the myth of Resurrection or even God in order to take his teachings as a philosophy. I don’t think it’s necessary to believe in supernatural occurrences, just to understand the point of his teachings.”

Austin man: “Can’t we just disagree and it be okay?”

Boston woman: “We had a youth pastor who basically was very young and hip and he sat down and the first thing he said to us was, ‘The Bible is a book of stories written by men, interpreted by men, and it’s just to help us understand our faith.’ And so, of course, that got me to think, ‘Oh, this is just a book of stories. This isn’t necessarily the Word of God.’ We all had this very inquisitive group…. It was very open, learning about other faiths and being inquisitive about how our faiths are tied together, rather than what separates us. That’s at 14, I started learning about that. My mom was nontraditional, into metaphysics, and so when I started having these questions, then I started asking her, ‘What are these other faiths?’ and ‘What goes on?’ She really was the one who helped me to understand metaphysics, universalism, Buddhism, all of these other things.”