Soul Searching

Twenty years ago Robert Bellah's Habits of the Heart made the point (as mentioned by Ken Myers), that many Americans don't have a vocabulary for talking about their lives except in individualistic terms. Even when they are communally active, the language of individualism provides categories of thought and deflects their the sense of what they should be pursuing in their lives.

Recently Christian Smith released new research on the religious views of teens. [Smith is the Stuart Chapin Distinguished Professor and associate chair of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill] He is also the director and chief investigator of a year’s research with thousands of teens called "A National Study on Youth and Religion." The research was based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a result of this research, Smith co-authored (with Melinda Lundquist Denton) a book, "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers," which summarizes the research. [summaries of the research can be found at www.youthandreligion.org]

One of the things they discovered was another language deficiency (than Bellah discovered) among most American teens. They were shocked about the lack of knowledge teens had about their own religious traditions and how little they seem invested in their own particularities. He was surprised that many of the Baptist kids he talked with were virtual deists. He came to see that among a widespread sample of young people, across denominational (Pentecostal to Baptist to Episcopalian) and even religious (Moslem) lines, a fairly coherent religious belief system. He labeled this belief system "therapeutic-moralistic deism." He summarized this system with these basic tenets:

• God exists, God created the world, God ordered the universe and this is how we understand that things are the way they are. The purpose of life is to be a good, nice and kind person. God does not have to be particular involved in one’s life, but He is available if you get into trouble or need some help along the way. He professionally takes care of your problems (kind of like a therapist), but he doesn’t hang around to get in the way. The purpose of life is to be happy. There is a heaven and a hell. Good people go to heaven. Most people are good and go to heaven.

He observed that mainline Protestant, Catholic and Jewish youth speak more in these terms. He also noted that the higher percentages of teens who don’t talk in the "therapeutic-moralistic deism" terms are found among conservative, Protestant, evangelical youth (and even Mormon’s). Nevertheless, he was astounded at how many Evangelical teens don’t know how to talk about Jesus, the Bible, or justification. They talk as if religion is just about being a good person so what else is there? Theological terms – such as redemption or grace – are virtually non-existent. Very few teens used the word "grace" in a theological sense; it was used mostly when referring to the TV show "Will & Grace."

There were those teens who could articulate the idea that Jesus died on the Cross to forgive our sins. But, when they were asked to explain what that meant or how or why that was so, they were at a loss. It was more of a catch-phrase.

Smith says that when he interviews older theology or Bible teachers who have taught across generations of students, they say their students today are typically less literate in their faith than students of prior generations.

Another trend they observed in their research is that teens’ faith will turn out looking mostly like their parents’ faith. The presence of the therapeutic beliefs is thought to come from the influence of the culture on parents. Smith cited the works of scholars like James Hunter to show how the therapeutic culture has deeply infiltrated the Evangelical church (not to mention the mainline churches). This has significantly impacted today’s teens.

He believes the "therapeutic-moralistic deism" of teens is also a result of our culture growing increasingly pluralistic with the emphasis on multi-culturalism. [Smith calls this "pluralistic civility." This is not having any beliefs that others might find intolerable.] In public and educational settings there is a lot of pressure on teens to speak more in generalities and not the particulars of their faith. So teens are fine talking about God, but they tend to choke on getting the word "Jesus" out of their mouths. In navigating through a pluralistic culture many teens have learned how to talk about things in ways that won’t make trouble at school and work. Ken Myers comments that this not multi-culturalism but mono-culturalism. It is the flattening of all cultures into the prevailing philosophical construct of secular, and relativistic pluralism.

Christian Smith said what was astonishing to him was that in schools and in general, there is not a lot of learned capacity to talk about difference. There is a lot of talking about different. So many teens we interviewed took the strategy in dealing with moral disagreement was, just don’t go there. You just don’t get into it. He sees a lack of training in moral argumentation in whatever subject. Teachers are not enabling students to discover their presuppositions, their assumptions, where they are starting from, their commitments, how that structures a debate, how do they engage someone who is quite different from them in a constructive way. Instead teens are learning is ‘we don’t want conflict here so we’re not going to get into that." This may work in eight-grade but it won’t work in negotiating through a culture where there is a great deal of difference.

Ken Myers appreciates Smith’s observations, and adds that he lays fault with churches who do not provide their members a Christian way of naming the world. The Church has a different account of the world, different story about reality, a different vocabulary and language. The Church’s account of life, meaning, human nature and well-being is different from the World’s. Myers cites Robert Louis Wilkin who states that at this moment in the Church’s history, in America and the West more generally, it less urgent to convince the alternative culture of the truth of Christ, than it is for the Church to tell itself it’s own story, and to nurture it’s own life – the culture of the city of God: the Christian republic.

Myers theorizes that possibly the reason teens are so sadly inarticulate because many church leaders have been so eager to reach youth in their own language, that they have failed, having reached them, to impart the vocabulary of the Kingdom , in which words like sin, grace, judgment, forgiveness, love, hospitality and vocation have a meaning that is distinctive and unlike the way the world speaks. That vocabulary is plausible and makes sense only if it is transmitted by within a community in which such terms have tangible consequences. So that distinctive language is expressive of a distinctive way of life. Eugene Peterson in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places says: "It is the task of the Christian community to give witness and guidance in the living of life in a culture that is relentless in reducing, constricting and enervating this life." He also comments: The Church’s message of salvation is not an amendment offered to already well lived lives, the message of the gospel is a radical alternative to the way our culture defines the good life. And some points it is so radically different that it appears as foolishness to the world.