Fascinating review by Ed Vitagliano of the book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, by Christian Smith and Melinada Lundquist. Smith and Denton explored the questions: What do young people who have been raised in church and identify themselves as Christians actually believe. I find the results insightful for understanding a generation ahead of the US in Canada. Several of their observations could be useful to Canadian Church leadership as we creatively face the challenge to make disciples of Jesus Christ. I will summarize from the article by Vitagliano.
1. Religious beliefs are seen as primarily moralistic. Faith exists to make you a better, more moral person. The goal of life is to be good. Therefore the question of truth is a matter of personal choice–this is “true for me;” that is “true for you.”
2. Religion is therapeutic; Faith exists to make a person happy and to help a person get through life.
3. God is just keeping watch over things. This “deistic” approach seems to be a hardened default position regarding the core matters of Christian faith. A majority of youth in the Church are not equipped to think about and articulate informed views regarding core matters of Christian life.
Smith and Denton have coined a phrase to describe this dominate view: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. They view this “faith” as a “parasitic faith” that “is simply colonizing many established religious traditions and congregations in the United States;” it is “the new spirit living in the old body. Its typical embrace and practice is de facto, functional, practical, and tacit, not formal or acknowledged as a distinctive religion.” Vitagliano notes that teenagers with this moralistic therapeutic deism “can remain happily within their original faith traditions, while believing things diametrically opposed to the actual tenets of that religion.”
Perhaps the most tragic observation from Soul Searching is that no one is pursuing dialogue with kids in church about the faith. The researchers write: “It was our distinct sense that for many of the teens we interviewed, our interview was the first time that any adult had ever asked them what they believed and how it mattered in their life.”
To read Vitagliano’s whole article follow this link.
