Christian Smith, Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame
University, co-authored a book with Melinda Lundquist Denton in 2005 titled, Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual
Lives of American Teenagers. They
suggested that the “de facto” dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in
the United States was what one might call “Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism.” They proposed
that the creed of that religion,
which they based on a large number of
interviews with teens, was this:
1. A God exists who created and orders the world
and watches over human life on earth.
2. God
wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible
and by most world religions.
3. The
central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about one self.
4. God
does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is
needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good
people go to heaven when they die.
Smith wrote, “Such a de facto creed is particularly
evident among mainline Protestant and Catholic youth but is also more than a
little visible among black and conservative Protestants, Jewish teens, other
religious types of teenagers, and even many ‘nonreligious’ teenagers in the
USA. Smith said that while they don’t
actually call their beliefs by the name, “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism” that is
in fact what it can be summarized to be.
This religion, according to Smith and Denton is “about inculcating a moralistic approach to life. It believes that central to living a good and
happy life is being a good, moral person.
That means being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, and responsible;
working on self-improvement; taking care of one’s health; and doing one’s best
to be successful.” When asked, one teen
from Maryland who described herself as nonreligious said,
“Morals are good if they’re
healthy for society. ……I think every
religion is important in its own respect.
…It’s just whatever makes you feel good about you.”
What’s “therapeutic” about it? In this de facto religion, according to Smith
and Denton, feeling good about oneself is
an essential aspect of living a moral life.
Smith said,
“This is not a religion
about repentance from sin, of keeping the Sabbath, of living as a servant of a
sovereign divine, of steadfastly saying one’s prayers, of faithfully observing
high holy days, of building character through suffering, … Rather, what appears to be the actual
dominant religion among teens is centrally
about feeling good, happy, secure, at peace. It is about attaining subjective well-being, being able to resolve problems, and getting
along amiably with other people.”
Thus, said Smith, “service
to others can be one means to feeling good about oneself.” And, “as
long as one is happy, why bother with being able to talk about the belief
content of one’s faith?” Most of the
time, as Smith put it, “the God of this faith keeps a safe distance. He is often described as ‘watching over
everything from above.’ “
This God, he says,
“..is not demanding. He actually can’t be, since his job is to
solve our problems and make people feel good. In short, God is something like a combination
Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist----he is always on call, takes care of any
problems that arise, professionally helps his people to feel better about
themselves, and does not become too personally involved in the process.”
Where
do teens get these ideas?
From their parents in most cases who believe as they do and from the
lack of real religious training that would impress on them any other means of
pleasing God and being saved from eternal damnation.
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| Alive and Well in a Church Near You? |
There is no official religion called Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism, but this is in fact “colonizing
many established religious traditions and congregations in the USA, that it
is merely becoming the new spirit living
within the old body.” Followers of
this creed are often either devout followers or mere nominal believers of other
traditional faiths, according to Smith.
“The Jewish version, for
instance, may emphasize the ethical living aspect of the creed, while the
Methodist version stresses the getting-to-heaven part. Each can think of themselves as belonging to
the specific religious tradition they name as their own, while simultaneously
sharing the cross-cutting, core beliefs of their de facto common Moralistic
Therapeutic Deist faith. In effect,
these believers get to enjoy whatever particulars of their own faith heritages
appeal to them, while also reaping the benefits of this shared, harmonizing, interfaith religion. This helps to explain the noticeable lack of
religious conflict between teenagers of apparently different faiths. For, in fact, we suggest that many of them
actually share the same deeper religious faith:
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.
What is there to have conflict about?”
Well, what does it matter anyway? It matters because it has a serious impact on
our culture. Smith said, MTD may be
nudging American civil religion in a ‘softer,’ more inclusive, ecumenical, and
multi-religious direction. ………..All can
then together hold hands and declare in unison, ‘Each person decides for
himself/herself!’
The authors suggest that those among us who appear to
have no faith at all, in fact, have developed a kind of “shared religion” that
does not require going to church, or worrying about salvation. After all, they are “good people” and they
believe that’s all that counts. Who goes to hell anymore anyway, right? Hitler and Stalin are both dead.
The authors conclude,
“Moralistic Therapeutic
Deism appropriates, abstracts, and revises doctrinal elements from mostly
Christianity and Judaism for its own
purpose. ………it functions to foster
subjective well-being in its believers and to
lubricate interpersonal relationships in the local public sphere. [It] exists, with God’s aid, to help people succeed in life, to make
them feel good, and to help them get along with others.
The language---and therefore
experience---of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church,
Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the
United States at the very least, to be being supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. It is not so much that Christianity in the United
States is being secularized. Rather more
subtly, either Christianity is at least
degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly,
Christianity is actively being colonized
and displaced by a quite different religious faith.”
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