Religious belief in the 21st century is a matter of personal choice. In fact, belief is hardly different from any trinket purchased at a shopping mall: what you choose becomes good, true, and beautiful simply because you have chosen it. And it can become false when you rue your choice and ask for a refund. You can believe whatever you want, mix and match theologies, argue that ancient taboos within your tradition are outdated nonsense, or perhaps start a new religion if you prefer not to chuck them all. You can also tell pollsters what you believe without fear of reprisal. Belief and consumer confidence are equally open to quantification, with only a small margin of error.

Nonetheless, poll results often surprise us all. Take, for instance, belief in God and the afterlife. A Harris Poll taken in February 2003 revealed that 90 percent of Americans believe in God, but only 84 percent believe in an eternal afterlife. And when it comes to what may lie beyond the grave, 82 percent believe in heaven, while only 69 percent believe in hell, and 27 percent believe in reincarnation. A whopping 51 percent believe in ghosts. Nearly a third of Americans (31 percent) also believe in astrology, along with ancient pagans. And what about the Evil One? Poor devil: only 68 percent believe in him. 1

We tend to take this pluralism for granted, and expect nothing but tolerance from our neighbors. In fact, 80 percent of the students in my freshman seminar recently argued that the most dangerous heresy confronting us today is the claim that there is such a thing as "truth." But how did we get here? What if we were all expected to believe in every tenet affirmed by one church that claimed to speak for God, as was the case in Western Christendom up until the 16th century, or much later in some places? Spain and Geneva might come to mind instantly, along with their notorious watchdog agencies, the Inquisition and the Consistory. How were their noisome fires snuffed out, and how did tolerance win ...

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