Soul Searching, Part 9- Moralistic Thereapuetic Deism and the Collapse of the Church in America

Perhaps the most alarming and also the most honest section of the book Soul Searching is the one that contains these passages:

In short, our teen interview transcripts reveal clearly that the language that dominates US adolescent interests and thinking about life, including religious and spiritual life, is primarily about personally feeling good and being happy. That is what defines the dominant epistemological framework and evaluative standard for most contemporary US teenagers- and probably for most of their baby boomer parents. This, we think, has major implications for religious faiths seriously attempting to pass on the established beliefs and practices of their historical traditions.- p. 168.


We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity's misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. This has happened in the minds and hearts of many individual believers and, it also appears, within the structures of at least some Christian organizations and institutions. The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, and heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward. It is not so much that US Christianity is being secularized. Rather, more subtly, 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.- p. 171.

A few thoughts in response to this: My last post covered a good bit of the themes related to these issues, so no need to rehash everything here. Suffice it to say my assessment of Christianity in America is not too different from this one.

Thinking in some more blatantly philosophical terms, I think what we are seeing here is an effect of Enlightenment/Modernistic thinking that resounded so well with American individualism. This philosophical thinking attempted to exalt the abilities of man to solve all of life's problems through concrete and scientific means. This optimistic, triumphant spirit is very prevalent in American thought where it was embodied in the individualistic spirit of the American dream. However, most of the philosophical claims of this movement have been abandoned because of logical problems and because of the experience of the 21st century. This is much more obvious in Europe- it is hard to tell a continent that still remembers vividly the destruction of two world wars and the tenseness of the Cold War that mankind is getting better and our problems are being solved. However, the optimism of Modernism has also given way in United States to a variety of Post-Modern philosophies.

Here is what makes this all relevant to our discussion- Modernism is built on the concrete- science and engineering are the golden occupations of Modernism because the belief is that through these mechanisms all the answers that can be answered and all the problems that can be solved will be. The "can be" is important- purely abstract things- like morality, religion, etc.- these things cannot be solved according to modernistic thinking. So we have to either be skeptics or relativists about questions regarding religion or morality. Post-Modernism is often considered more radically relativistic. I am of the persuasion, however, that a positive post-modern philosophy that does not result in a radical relativism is possible (and maybe someday I will write out something that outlines such a philosophy… probably not, but lets be optimistic). This skepticism/relativism however leads to a variety of systems of morality (and religion) that attempt to provide some sort of moral guidance without making absolute claims. Typically, the guiding principle for these systems is "whatever makes you happy" or "whatever you feel is best." These systems are very much rooted in emotions and the immediate satisfaction of our desires. Is it any wonder, then, that our churches have begun to teach the same, even if it is couched in more religious terms? Far too often we hear that following God will make you rich or that following God is the key to happiness. Godliness the is the key to a successful marriage (it no doubt plays a part, but I know plenty of non-believers with more successful marriages than most of the believers I know). Godliness is the key to satisfaction at work (I never found this to be true when I was working in the food business…). And what is Godliness anyway? It gets defined in terms of jumping through some religious hoops- reading the word and praying everyday, attending church regularly, etc.- all things that ensure that people who work in ministry (like I do) have jobs. Now, no doubt all of those things are beneficial. And no doubt godliness is beneficial. But is that our motivation for doing these things? For a religion that claims in most of its literature that selfishness is wrong and immoral, this whole scheme sounds very selfish!

One final consideration concerning the implications for all of this for our church leadership and global missions. There are two conflicting phenomena going on in the global church. First, the dominant presence of the church in the West is shrinking while the presence of the church in non-Western parts of the world is exploding. Second, the leadership of the church is still overwhelmingly Western. In part this is natural- the West has existing leadership structures that have yet to be built in the developing parts of the world. However, it is also worrisome. Particularly among American missionaries who attempt to provide leadership to other parts of the Christian world, I get the strong impression that there is an attempt to export American modes of thinking to these regions. Given everything we have said already about the cultural inconsistencies between what should be proper Christian doctrine and the popular American conception of faith, this should set off a lot of alarm bells. Somehow as we educate and teach other cultures to follow Christ, we need to keep in mind that we have not exactly done this well ourselves and that we do not need to teach them to repeat our mistakes but instead to learn from them and avoid them.

Soul Searching, Part 8- Consumerism and the Church in America

More on the damaging effects of individualism taken too far in America:

Most US youth tend to assume an instrumental view of religion. Most instinctively suppose that religion exists to help individuals be and do what they want, and not as an external authority or divinity that makes compelling claims and demands on their lives, especially to change or grow in ways they may not immediately want to. For most US teenagers, religion is something to personally believe in that makes one feel good and resolves one's problems. For most, it is not an entire way of life or a disciplined practice that makes hard demands of or changes people. Stated differently, for many US teenagers, God is treated as something like a cosmic therapist or counselor, a ready and competent helper who responds in times of trouble but who does not particularly ask for devotion or obedience… This instrumental view of religion is not the invention of teenagers. It seems to be a dominating image of religion embraced by many adults in the United States.- pp. 147-148.

The rugged individualism that drives the "American Dream"- the quest for greatness through individual accomplishment that so dominates most of American culture seems to have a more deep effect on American religion than just promoting an attitude of self-service rather than collective involvement. It also seems to alter some very foundational concepts, such as the relationship between God and man. Traditionally in the Judeo-Christian religion, this relationship has been likened to that between a King and his subjects. We do not "use" God, we serve him. We do not really have a choice in that matter, either- God demands our allegiance as a King demands the allegiance of his subjects and if we do not grant it to him, then trouble ensues for us. That has been how this has normally been understood. It is interesting to note two periods where such an understanding did not occur and the revolutionary results that occurred on both those occasions.

The first is in the first century AD. In the period leading up to this, Jewish thought had developed away from the notion that they must serve God as his subjects and instead begun to develop the notion that by jumping through certain hoops, they could in fact guarantee that God would do certain things for them- in essence promoting the manipulation of God for their own good. Along came Jesus and later one of his apostles Paul. In what we hear from both of these early Christian leaders we see a radical challenge to this mindset. Both find themselves executed largely at Jewish prodding for advancing the notion that God's sovereignty demands our allegiance and that ritual cannot manipulate God into performing acts on our behalf. We receive things from God because he intends to give them to us as part of furthering his plan, a plan for which we are also working if we are his servants. This was lost in first century Judaism, and the result is a radical split of the people of God with the church being forced to break away from its mother institution- Judaism.

The second incident happens at the Protestant Reformation. Catholic theology has at this point made the same mistake as did Jewish theology in the first century. They have proposed a series of rituals by which "purgatory" can be escaped and salvation secured. Again, we see a manipulation of God going on in Church ritual. In response to this come the Reformers who demand that we once again recognize that salvation comes by the will of God alone and is for his purposes, not our own selfish interest. Again, the sovereignty of God had been supplanted by the will of man, and again a radical transformation in the thought patterns of the church had to take place.

Now for those of you who know my personal theological leanings this all may sound a bit out of step. I'm sounding very Calvinistic today, and I will have to write another post later that somehow squares all of this with what I also believe to be true- that we as people have free will. That is for another post, however.

The main point of this post is this- I am afraid a similar error is at work in our churches today, at least in America. The individualism and consumerism (which is just a working out of individualism in economic terms) of our culture have been applied to our religious values. Just as we can pick and choose what suits us in a super-market, so we can pick and choose what suits us in the church. If I don't like the preacher at this church, I go down the street and join that one. If the music isn't quite up to par, I just go off to another church where they have hired a professional band to wow them with their music finesse. Especially among denominations (or non-denominations) where individual churches stand on their own (this is primarily Baptist churches) this phenomenon means that the survival of the church in large part depends on its ability to draw a crowd. So mega-churches thrive and small-town churches die out. And to thrive mega-churches alter their teaching and style to suit the "needs" (read "whimsical desires") of their congregants. The real result of this in terms of theology has been, in my experience, the idea that salvation is accomplished simply by saying a little prayer to ask Jesus to live inside you and then you are guaranteed a spot in heaven no matter what happens the rest of your life. To be frank, this whole concept is heretical and has probably sent more souls to hell in America than any other lie that has seeped into our churches. Yes, salvation is the free gift of God to man. But the God who paid a high price to accomplish this salvation does not expect for his gift to be trampled by those who just want a ticket to paradise but can't afford a cruise in the Caribbean. He expects for the gravity of what he has accomplished on our behalf to inspire a life of service to him, a life engaged in winning back the world that has fallen to sin and restoring creation to how it should be. What we have done and are doing in America is attempting to manipulate God for our own purposes. I don't think such an exercise can continue, there is going to have to be a "reformation" of some sort that occurs in the American church as well.

Soul Searching, Part 7- Individualism And Understanding Wider Relationships

This section of the book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers is remarkable to me:

American youth, like American adults, are nearly without exception profoundly individualistic, instinctively presuming autonomous, individual self-direction to be a universal human norm and life goal. Thoroughgoing individualism is not a contested orthodoxy for teenagers. It is an invisible and pervasive doxa, that is, an unrecognized, unquestioned, invisible premise or presupposition… most US teenagers are at least somewhat allergic to anything they view as trying to influence them. They generally view themselves as autonomous mediators or arbitrators of all outside influences; it is they themselves who finally influence their own lives… This autonomous individualism, not incidentally, helps to explain why teens have such difficulty articulating how religion influences them. They have difficulty imaging how religion influences their lives because they tend to imagine that nothing influences them, at least without their final choice that it does so. The idea that one's life is being formed and transformed by the power of a historical religious tradition can be nearly incomprehensible to people who have allergies to outside influences. Such a perspective lends itself instead to thinking of religion as something one chooses to use… not something to which one devotes oneself or gives away one's life. -pp. 143-144.

This aspect of American culture has continually baffled me. From the standpoint of one who has spent a good amount of time studying the history of philosophical ideas, it amazes me how dependent American thought is on the Renaissance humanists of Italy and Germany in the fifteenth century and on the British liberal philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century such as John Locke and Adam Smith. And while I appreciate the impact of all of these great thinkers- it is certainly a benefit that individual rights have come to be regarded as undeniable in Western culture and that tyranny has been all but eradicated in the West in the name of protecting those rights- it is interesting to see how American culture in particular has taken all these ideas to an extreme that is not present anywhere else in the world. My family has strong ties to the UK and I have friends scattered around Europe. As "Democratized" as those countries are, they are also all very "collectivistic" in their political and social outlooks. Policies on everything from economics to foreign affairs to social norms are set from the standpoint of what is best for the nation as a whole (frequently with a utilitarian ring, this is true, but still the idea of collective responsibility is very prominent in European thinking and politics). This is why it shocks Europeans that America does not have a national health-care system.

America was founded as a series of colonies mostly populated by people who couldn't make it in the Old World and so came here to start anew and hit it big. Most of America's history consists of movement to the frontier where this same mentality of a new opportunity to be successful drew settlers. Its interesting to note that is predominantly the major costal cities that were populated and industrialized earliest where the "liberal" ideas of "European Socialism" have taken the most root. It is the still-growing interior parts of American where "conservative" (where conservative means, in fact, the classical liberal ideas of the European Enlightenment) ideals still dominate and where individualism is most apparent (though its definitely still apparent in the costal cities as well). The overwhelming American mentality since its inception has been that success means growth which means you have to work as hard as you can to make more money than you already do to have a more "comfortable" existence than you do now (where comfortable means having more stuff that you cannot use because you are constantly working to acquire more). Ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but this is definitely the stereo-type and it is one that is true more often than not. There is a story I heard of some American businessmen who were visiting Brazil and saw some fisherman napping in their boat just off shore. "What are you doing?" they asked. "Relaxing" was the answer. "Shouldn't you be working?" "Why would we do that?" "Well, you could make more money then." "What for?" "So you could buy more equipment and make even more money." "What for?" "So you could hire some other people to fish for you and then you could just sit around and relax." "Well that's what we are doing now…" The point of this whole diatribe is merely this: The American dream is unsustainable. Success is not measured in material goods but in the quality of life lived with what you have. And quality is not a material term either, it’s a relational and a spiritual one. Better to die with little but the appreciation and respect of many than to die filthy rich but unknown and unloved.

To come back to the real point of this entire post- the individualism that so dominates our culture is a double-edged sword. It robs us of a sense of who we are in relation to the rest of the world. And it quite frequently robs us of a greater quality of life that would be lived if we would just slow down a bit and relax and enjoy what we already have. The first of these is especially important- without a sense of who we are and where we come from, we tend to think that our life is just lived in a void. The typical American mentality is to say "I am alive for an amount of time that is, in the big scheme of things, insignificant. So if I want my life to be significant, I have to be hugely successful." Yet, such a mentality forgets that we are not living in a vacuum. We are part of an entity larger than ourselves- our culture, our religious tradition, our nation, our world, etc. Significance to our individual life doesn't have to depend on carving out an individual name for ourselves. It can just as easily come from continuing the movement of which we are a part, from furthering causes that are not solely ours but which we are part of. We accomplish more together than separately. But to work together, we have to understand who we are in relation to each other. And this involves recognizing the influences that have shaped all of us- the common history we share just as much as it does recognizing the individual strengths and weaknesses that we bring to the table.