Hell Hath No Fury
With fire and brimstone out of fashion, modern thinking says the netherworld isn't so hot after all
suffer eternal fiery torments 48 pct. 34 pct.
Hell is an anguished state of existence
eternally separated from God 46 pct. 53 pct.
Don't know 4 pct. 11 pct.
U.S. news poll of 1,014 adults conducted by Market Facts' Telenation survey Dec. 27-29, 1999. Margin of error: plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Percentages may not add up to 100 because of rounding. Figures for 1997 are from U.S. News poll of 1,000 adults conducted March 10-12, 1997.
[Drawing and photo captions]
ALIENATION FROM GOD. Pope John Paul II has said that "hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God."
THE TEMPORAL HELL. "Once we discovered we could create hell on Earth," says one scholar, "it became silly to talk about it in a literal sense."
OUTER DARKNESS. Retrieving and updating a long-neglected doctrine of the church could make it available once again as a prod to piety and virtue.
THE LAKE OF FIRE. The graphic imagery became fixed in the popular imagination with Dante's fictional descriptions in The Divine Comedy.
THE SECOND DEATH. Some theologians say that the end of the wicked is destruction, not eternal suffering.
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