Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: The De Facto Religion of Many Christians

I’d like to draw your attention to an excellent essay by Christian Smith, “On ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’ as U.S.Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,” which I found at the website for the Princeton Theological Seminary.

Christian Smith wrote Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, with Melinda Lundquist.

The authors interviewed hundreds of teenagers about their religious views. They concluded that the typical church-going American teen believes —

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 oneself.

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.

But these childish perspectives do not greatly change when teens become adults. Smith concludes,

Few teenagers today are rejecting or reacting against the adult religion into which they are being socialized. Rather, most are living out their religious lives in very conventional and accommodating ways. The religion and spirituality of most teenagers actually strike us as very powerfully reflecting the contours, priorities, expectations, and structures of the larger adult world into which adolescents are being socialized.

In other words, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) is the Christianity of the masses. Adults might express their views more articulately, but ultimately, our teens believe what we adults believe — and what we adults believe is that God is our servant, who serves our whims so we can live happy, fulfilled lives here on earth and go to heaven when we die.

Let’s look a little more closely at the conclusions drawn by Smith and Lundquist.

Deism

Deism is the belief in a higher power that created the universe but a power that is not necessarily the God of the Bible. There are, among theologians and philosophers, several variation on Deism, but in this case, the authors are referring more to a practical Deism rather than a thoughtful, philosophical Deism.

That is, the views of the teens they interviewed are Deistic because their view of God is a generalized, universal Higher Power, not specifically the God the Bible. That is, they don’t often speak in terms of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, the cross, or any truly distinctively Christian doctrine. Rather, “God” to them is simply a higher power to whom they pray, who wants what’s best for them, and will take them to heaven when they die.

Therefore, the Christian MTD God is not greatly different from Allah or whatever deity any other religion worships. A typical American Christian teenager would struggle to explain how Christianity differs from, say, Judaism in their essential beliefs. And, of course, most of our teenagers are functional universalists, that is, they figure any moral person will ultimately wind up in heaven.

Their views are also somewhat Deistic in the sense that the MTD God does not make demands on Christians beyond a vague sense of morality — much the same morality that prevails among many non-believers who hold to Western, middle-class values — do not steal, do not murder, etc.

However, their views break outside the classic Deistic mold in that the MTD God does involve himself in the affairs of mankind in a knowable way — but not to make demands. Rather, the MTD God answers prayers and works to provide a good life for his followers. He is a God who serves his followers by rewarding their good morality, regular church attendance, and prayers by making things go well for them.

We see this flawed Christianity in our preaching in several respects. If your church preaches morality but not Jesus, it’s an MTD church. If your church teaches the plan of salvation without reference to the saving work of Jesus — if it’s about what we do to get saved — it’s an MTD church. If your preaching emphasizes what God does for us over what we do for God, it’s an MTD church. If your church doesn’t teach and preach the Holy Spirit, it just might be an MTD church. If your church emphasizes what we get from prayer rather than what we can do for others through prayer, it’s an MTD church. If your church finds little purpose in the Gospels compared to the Epistles, it just might be an MTD church.

Indeed, there are certainly strands of Church of Christ practice and teaching that take us in an MTD direction. Churches that emphasize orthodoxy over orthopraxy — the right positions on the issues over right living — tacitly teach that the price of salvation is cheap and easy. In fact, there are some among us who deny that the Holy Spirit is active today because they are philosophically committed to the view that God stopped intervening in human affairs 2,000 years ago — and that’s a form of Deism.

There are some among us who deny that the Gospels are even scriptures for the church, as Jesus taught before Pentecost. And there are those who see countless commands in the scriptures but no Jesus. Indeed, many of our congregations rarely preach the cross. They believe, quite literally, that Jesus simply replace the Law of Moses with the Law of Christ, and so we still live under a law-based system.

As K. C. Moser pointed out many years ago, when we can preach the entire “Plan of Salvation” and not once mention Jesus, we’re practicing something very far removed from New Testament Christianity.