Abstract

In 1944–45 a survey was carried out on the topic of religion in a London borough, and in 1960 the survey was repeated in the same borough. In both 1945 and 1960 over forty per cent of those attending Anglican services said that they did not believe in a life after death. When due allowance has been made for the relative unreliability of public opinion sampling, it is nevertheless obvious that incredulity on this issue is widespread and probably increasing, even within the Church. There are at least two main reasons for this—that personal immortality is commonly held to be incompatible with the scientific view of man, and the apparent irrelevance of the belief for life in the here and now. The question in people's minds today is no longer what the Bible says about immortality, nor what the churches teach on the subject [if indeed they teach anything at all]. These questions can be answered by reading the Bible and by consulting manuals of doctrine. The problem is this: How is it possible in any meaningful sense to believe in a life after death in the 'sixties of the twentieth century?