The recent Pew Forum study on religion, widely reported in the media, shows that the vast majority of Americans remains religious: 92 percent believe in God. This percentage has remained relatively stable for more than half a century.

Atheists remain a tiny proportion of the population with some interesting anomalies: 21 percent of self-identified atheists say they believe in God, with nearly 10 percent of them "absolutely sure" of it. What this means is that 21 percent of self-described atheists are highly confused and 10 percent are certified nut-cases.

What got the most attention, however, was Pew's discovery that a majority of religious Americans believe that other religions make valid claims about God and can lead to heaven. Around 80 percent of Catholics, Protestants and Jews, as well as 55 percent of Muslims, reject the idea that their religion is the only way.

These findings, however, hardly suggest that pluralism has overtaken truth as the defining feature of American religion. First of all, Christianity is the only religion to hold another religion to be wholly true. That religion is Judaism. Second, Catholics and Protestants have become increasingly convinced that it is fidelity to creedal Christianity--and not the denominational differences of past centuries--that is decisive for salvation. Finally many people don't realize that just as Christianity sees itself as succeeding and incorporating Judaism, so Islam sees itself as coming after and incorporating both Judaism and Christianity. Consequently I'm not surprised that most Muslims view Jews and Christians as fellow monotheists rather than hell-bound infidels.

Soon my Orange County debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens and Jewish radio host Dennis Prager will be up on the web and I'll link to it. The debate, amusingly billed as a Christian-Atheist-Jewish showdown, had some fiery and fascinating exchanges. At one point Hitchens sought to alienate me from the Jews in the audience by asking me if good and decent Jews can go to heaven. I said I believe they can. This is no denial of the central Christian proposition that Christ is the way to salvation. The Bible clearly specifies that there is salvation through Christ for his followers.

But Scripture and Christian teaching leave open the question of what happens to virtuous non-Christians who either lived before Christ or who have not had a chance to accept him. My hope and belief is that God's mercy can extend to them also, as it did to Moses and Abraham and the God-fearing Jews of the Old Testament. If so, they too would be saved through Christ's sacrifice on the cross, even if they did not consciously and explicitly embrace that sacrifice. As for atheists who reject God and affirm with Hitchens that they want nothing to do with heaven, we can be reasonably confident that God will respect their free will and reluctantly grant their wish.

There are two kinds of pluralism: the kind that holds that truth does not matter, and the kind that holds that truth matters greatly but as flawed human beings our reason and experience gives us only limited access to the truth. The first kind of pluralism is deadly for religion, and is typically embraced by flaccid people who are too lazy to think or who have been seduced by postmodernist flimflam. The second kind of pluralism is the shared ground of debate between intelligent believers and unbelievers. The stakes could not be higher.