Amoralistic Spiritualistic Theism
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism — The Study
In 2005, sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton published their findings on the common beliefs among American youth in the groundbreaking book, The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. In the study that interviewed roughly 3,000 individuals, rather than articulate historic and traditional beliefs of major religions, American youth expressed a constellation of commonly-held beliefs that Smith and Denton coined as moralistic therapeutic deism (MTD).
According to their findings, the core tenets of MTD that American youth had consensus on were:
- A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism — The Story
As with all instances of studies, statistics, and findings, often the biggest impact comes not from the research itself but the story that is crafted and told with the research. Smith and Denton’s study was truly groundbreaking, and their analysis of the data suggests that American Christianity has gradually devolved into a mutated, anemic form.
Christian conservatives quickly latched onto this study and the terminology of MTD as demonstrable evidence that American Christianity had become liberal, cultural, and compromised in its message and method.
Albert Mohler, as early as 2005, reflected on Smith and Denton’s study:
Does this mean that America is becoming more secularized? Not necessarily. These researchers assert that Christianity is either degenerating into a pathetic version of itself or, more significantly, Christianity is actively being colonized and displaced by a quite different religious faith.
Michael Horton of White Horse Inn and R.C. Sproul of Ligonier frequently discussed the findings of Smith and Denton’s study to show a need for a “modern reformation” and a return back to the distinctive theological emphases of the Protestant Reformation. Both of their respective ministries were, to some degree, offered as an antidote to growing “Christless Christianity” of the day that MTD was definitive proof of.
A quick Google search on MTD can provide you a whole swathe of conservative Christian takes on the subject.
Amoralistic Spiritualistic Theism — A Missing Conversation Partner
On the one hand, I do commend the conservative Christians who have tried to appropriate Smith and Denton’s study in order to sound the alarm, as it were, on the watering down of the historic Christian faith. Liberalization and secularization are indeed threats to historic Christianity and the gospel. There is no doubt about that.
On the other hand, I wonder why a conversation partner has been left out from the discussion. Whether we like it or not, as severe as a problem MTD, secularization, and liberalization are, the overwhelming preponderance of historical evidence shows that orthodox, theologically precise Christianity that was orthopraxically bankrupt has been the plague of American Christianity since its beginning.
Although we can’t round up a data set and interview them one by one, perhaps we need a term like amoralistic spiritualistic theism (AST) to describe the pattern of beliefs passed down in American Christianity since 1619:
- Outward profession of the Triune God of the Bible and affirmation of orthodox Trinitarian theology.
These professing Christians were able to check off all the boxes on a theological exam and may have even been pastors, professors, and leaders in the church.
2. God has left much in the realm of amorality and adiaphora, such that it is ultimately and only the individual conscience that deems something a sin.
American Christians would frequently argue that slavery, segregation, and systems of greed weren’t objectively sinful according to the Bible, but were left up to the individual conscience. In some cases, they created entire sophisticated doctrinal systems (e.g. the spirituality of the church and two-kingdoms theology) to both protect unjust social systems and prevent ecclesiastical censure.
3. The central focus of the Christian faith is inward spirituality.
Material and social concerns were deemed as outside of the spiritual mission of the church and therefore had no place in ministry. Anything that is within the realm of the material and social were seen as distractions to the “gospel,” which was exclusively defined as impacting the individual soul. As such, these concerns were even seen as suspect as a part of everyday Christian living and potential cases of losing focus on the “gospel.”
4. The Christian faith does not require whole-bodily obedience and self-sacrifice.
Because the central focus of Christianity is inward spirituality, the only requirement of true Christian living is intellectual recollection of theological facts, especially of redemption accomplished. External piety and service are superfluous at best, pietistic at worst. It didn’t matter if someone owned slaves as long as they could confess the right doctrinal beliefs.
5. The “good guys” are “products of their time” and go to heaven.
Despite lifelong patterns of injustice and oppression, the “good guys” are in a protected class that can’t be judged by future generations. The “bad guys,” though, go to hell because they are “too cultural.”
Amoralistic Spiritualistic Theism — A Cause of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism?
Conservative Christians like to point out MTD as an “a-ha!” to show the gradual slide away from Christian influence in the United States. But, the fact of the matter is that AST was around long before Smith and Denton’s study.
May I suggest that MTD and AST may be more connected than we might have originally thought? It may be entirely possible that the American youth (and, quite frankly, the American populace at large) have devolved into views that constitute MTD not only because of the influence of “the culture,” but also because of the dark specter of hypocrisy, moral compromise, and two-facedness that AST represents. American Christianity is not considered a viable epicenter of holistic truth — truth believed and truth lived out.
Although I am aware that personal anecdotes can’t be considered quantitative data, qualitatively, they have a story to tell. Conversations and interactions with de-churched millennials and Generation Z individuals share a common thread. Many of them did not leave their Christian upbringings simply because of the overwhelming wave of secularization and liberalization of the culture and world out there fraught with temptations and seductions. Rather, many of them were caught in the riptide of church abuse and were made into scapegoats for a systemized protection of influential church leaders. Many of them had been trained to believe that their tradition’s slice of Christianity was the best until they dug into their tradition’s [ongoing] history of complicity and protection of injustice. If their tradition was the best Christianity had to offer, what reason did they have to stay within its fold?
I believe that it is imperative that conservative Christian leaders, in order to be taken seriously about their alarm-sounding for MTD, take seriously the collateral damage that their forebears’ actions have had on the generation that should be the next leaders of the church. They need to take seriously the continual bleeding that goes on today as many corners of the American church would rather dig their heels in to protect a myth about their institutional history at the expense of faithful witness and the loss of entire generations of the church. Perhaps this is one example where Jesus’ words ring loudly in our ears —
“You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:5
