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Monday 27 August 2012
Why is faith falling in the US?

According to the research, the young are leaving conservative churches because they disagree with traditional views on homosexuality. They chafe at those churches’ association with the Republican Party.

They’re not joining liberal churches, the ones that make a big deal out of welcoming and affirming gays. Instead, young adults increasingly see no reason to go to church at all.

This rapid and widespread falling away of the young from institutional Christianity is the first harvest of what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton dub “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism”.

According to Smith’s research, MTD is the default religion of nearly all American young people, both Christian and non-Christian, who are a generation of theological illiterates (Mormon youth are a fascinating exception).

MTD teaches that God exists and wants us to be nice, and that happiness is the point of life. In MTD, God, who is “something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist”, doesn’t have to be involved in one’s life unless one needs something.

It’s the perfect pseudo-religion for an individualist, consumerist, prosperous culture. You can see why a generation raised on MTD would have no interest in traditional religion, with its truth claims and strictures.

If God expects nothing of you but to be nice and to be happy, why roll out of bed on Sunday morning, even for the most progressive of liturgies?

America’s postmodern religious future, then, would appear to belong to theological slackers who believe in a vague deity who makes no demands, and only provides psychological comfort. Who needs that mush? At least atheists have the courage of their lack of religious convictions.

The thing is, if America’s historic religion had been about therapeutic self-love and bourgeois bedlam instead of rigour, repentance and reform, neither the 19th-century abolitionists nor the 20th-century civil rights marchers would have had a thing to go on.

32 notes

  1. grig-yan reblogged this from azspot
  2. escapeofdreams reblogged this from azspot
  3. sylviac reblogged this from azspot
  4. therealizationofme reblogged this from azspot and added:
    I like this a lot
  5. marcovhv said: Religion will slowly, but surely, disappear for the simple reason that it’s a primitive thing. Eventually humanity will get passed this ‘need’ for a god and accept the fact that there is no god except for in believers’ heads.
  6. jolly-dolly reblogged this from azspot and added:
    Pretty simply? Your God is a sadistic asshole more like an abusive parent, or a scientist experimenting on animals until...
  7. dailyrenegade reblogged this from azspot and added:
    Well said.
  8. 6dogs9cats reblogged this from azspot and added:
    IF RELIGION ISN”T HELD TO A STANDARD…then how can religion dictate morality?
  9. azspot posted this

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