As per a recent surveys, conceptually Americans are slowly becoming more like Hindus and less like traditional Christians in the ways they think about God, themselves, each other, and eternity.
On the question of GOD
The Rig Veda says: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, None is better than any other; all are equal. While conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."
Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of Americans believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing.
On the question of Resurrection.
Christians traditionally believe that bodies and souls are sacred, that together they comprise the "self," and that at the end of time they will be reunited in the Resurrection. You need both, in other words, and you need them forever.
Hindus believe no such thing. At death, the body burns on a pyre, while the spirit—where identity resides—escapes. In reincarnation, central to Hinduism, selves come back to earth again and again in different bodies.
So here is another way in which Americans are becoming more Hindu: 24 percent of Americans say they believe in reincarnation, according to a 2008 Harris poll. More than a third of Americans now choose cremation, according to the Cremation Association of North America, up from 6 percent in 1975.
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