Friday night the Renew 2010 conference at Westminster Presbyterian Church featured Notre Dame professor of sociology Christian Smith. Smith is best known as author of
Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Based on 3,000 lengthy telephone interviews with teenagers (and their parents) as well as 267 in-depth follow-up personal interviews in 2003 and 2005, Smith concluded that the actual religion of American teenagers is
moralistic,
therapeutic,
deism: (i) a God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth, (ii) God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught in the Bible and most world religions, (iii) the central goal in life is to be happy and feel good about oneself, (iv) God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when he is needed to resolve a problem, and (v) good people go to heaven when they die.
For what it's worth, I doubt that the religion of American teenagers differs significantly from their parents' religion. In fact, it differs only slightly from what was called American Civil Religion back in the 70s. Significant by their absence (at least in the Christian account) is any awareness of sin, judgment, and salvation in Christ.
Saturday morning Smith went on to summarize the results of the results of interviews with the same cohort five years later. I'll save my summary of his findings but for now it's safe to say that the Church in America has utterly failed to communicate effectively the truths that virtually all Christian traditions have acknowledged for 2,000 years. The Church has always existed in some tension with American culture, or at least it should have. Some might be relieved that any such tension has disappeared. American culture has won. Amazingly sad.
