Religious Beliefs interactive

"USA Today" has a neat interactive summary of some Pew Forum research data about religious beliefs in the United States as well as a "Topography of Faith" section. Both use Flash.

You can select one variable and then sort the bar chart of results based on that variable. It's a great way to squeeze out visual patterns from the data.

Who is going to Hell?

People of faith hold no common answer as to who goes to Hell and who does not. Christian denominations have differing views, and those differ from Jews or Universalists.

Louisiana's Herald-Argus newspaper posed the "Who is going to Hell?" question in an article and got a lot of comments. Feel free to read them and even add your own.

Methodists may be interested to know that the denomination's belief in prevenient grace might mean that God may allow anyone to escape an afterlife in Hell, according to Dean William Lawrence, SMU Perkins School of Theology.

Prevenient grace is divine love preceding any conscious action, a concept that John Wesley wrote the concept into Article 8 of the Articles of Religion he adapted for American Methodists.