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MORALISTIC
T H E R A P E U T I C
DEISM
MORALISTIC
T H E R A P E U T I C
DEISM
OUR NEW RELIGION
 
About the Author 
R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.He maintains a blog with other articles at www.albertmohler.comSeminary information at www.sbts.eduWe have been distributing this information in MICC to parents and teenagers, to youth leadersand small group leaders since Smith’s study was released in 2005.This edition includes an extended article by Christian Smith,and a follow up story from CNN.com from August 2010.Smith has published two books:
Soul Searching,
looking at the lives of teenagers,and
Souls in Transition
, expanding the study to include young adults.
 
W 
HEN CHRISTIAN SMITH AND HIS FELLOW RESEARCHERS WITHthe National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Caro-lina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by Americanteenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came downto something the researchers identified as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefslike these:1. “A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human lifeon earth.”2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in theBible 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 God isneeded to resolve a problem.”5. “Good people go to heaven when they die.”That, in sum, is the creed to which much adolescent faith can be reduced. After con-ducting more than 3,000 interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reportedthat, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescentsresponded with a shrug and “whatever.”As a matter of fact, the researchers, whose report is summarized in
Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers 
by Christian Smith with MelindaLundquist Denton, found that American teenagers are incredibly inarticulate about theirreligious beliefs, and most are virtually unable to offer any serious theological under-
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
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11, 2005
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