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Rob wants to suggest that a just or righteous or holy or judging God is somehow not good news. Tell that to the oppressed Christians in North Korea.   Tell that to the ordinary citizens of Libya longing to be set free from a wicked and brutal dictator.  Tell that to the Jews during the Holocaust in WWII.   In a sin-soaked world,  Good News involves both redemption and judgment, both vindication and liberation, both holiness and love.    The God of the Bible is holy love.  Not love without holiness which would fail to deal with the cancer called sin.  And not holiness without love, for if that was the way God related to us all— no one could stand.     The Good News of and about Jesus Christ, who will be the final judge of the world, is that justice, mercy and grace are all a part of this story.

actual "church attendance rates for Protestants and Catholics are approximately one half" of what people reported.

nearly 50 percent more people claimed they attended services when asked the type of question that pollsters ask: "Did you attend religious services in the last week?"

in reality about 21 percent of Americans attended religious services weekly—exactly half the number who told pollsters they did.

Brenner found that the United States and Canada were outliers—not in religious attendance, but in overreporting religious attendance. Americans attended services about as often as Italians and Slovenians and slightly more than Brits and Germans. The significant difference between the two North American countries and other industrialized nations was the enormous gap between poll responses and time-use studies in those two countries.

Do you really mean to say that the central truth of Christianity is about getting out of hell and into heaven? Or, are you presenting this as Rob's view? If so, I'd have to disagree with you. Can you elaborate?

it is not accurate by any stretch to call orthodox a view that (1) tends toward universalism, (2) presents a “second-chance” theology, and (3) argues that nothing of what is central to the Gospel story is about “getting in”. This view can claim the label orthodoxy about as much as those found among the Gnostic Gospels. Sure there were so-called Christians used these texts and who thought of them as Christian Scripture, but they were on the very fringes of early Christianity representing only a very small minority.

Well we haven't defined heaven yet which is important in such a discussion, but yes I think a central aspect of Jesus teaching was getting into the soon coming kingdom which I equate with heaven.