I heard this on NPR this morning as I was waking up the kids ... I guess Jeff set their alarm clock radio last night ... in vain.

I thought I was in a time-warp because, well, aren't we done with this discussion?

"Survey: More have dropped dogma for spirituality in U.S." - USATODAY.com, 6/24/08:

"Americans believe in everything. It's a spiritual salad bar," says Rice University sociologist Michael Lindsay. Rather than religious leaders setting the cultural agenda, today, it's Oprah Winfrey, he says.

When he factors in Pew's February findings that 44% of adults say they've switched to another religion or none at all, Lugo says, "You have to wonder: How do you guarantee the integrity of a religious tradition when so many people are coming or going or following ideas that don't match up?"

The Rev. Frank Page of Taylors, S.C., past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, is not surprised by the Pew findings. "The number (of churches that) teach a clear doctrinal Christianity are a minority today. How would people know it when they never hear about how to be saved?"

"We still work as hard as we can to share the good news," he says, "even though we know most will reject the way."

"Christians: No One Path to Salvation" - TIME, 6/23/08:

Americans of every religious stripe are considerably more tolerant of the beliefs of others than most of us might have assumed, according to a new poll released Monday.

An acceptance of the notion of other paths to salvation dilutes the impact of the doctrine that Christ died to remove sin and thus opened the pathway to eternal life for those who accept him as their personal savior. It could also reduce the impulse to evangelize, which is based on the premise that those who are not Christian are denied salvation. The problem, says Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is that "the cultural context and the reality of pluralism has pulled many away from historic Christianity."

Says Lindsay, "The problem is not that Americans don't believe in anything, but that they believe in everything, and the two things don't always fit together."

More so than Christ's divinity or Resurrection, [Dr. Al Mohler] says, "the exclusivity of the Gospel is the most vulnerable doctrine in the face of the modern world."

I think it all boils down to definitions, how they asked the questions, distorted media sound-bites and the fact that people don't want to come across as bigoted, especially Christians.