This Discussion will serve as the first of your interactions with the text and your
classmates and will assist you in thinking through one of the prevailing worldviews in
American culture. Christian Smith calls this “moralistic therapeutic deism." After watching
the presentation titled Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, respond to the following prompt:
Do you think Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is an accurate reflection of society today?
What are relevant examples you can provide that support your conclusion?
Moralisc Therapeuc Deism
I want to talk to you over the next few minutes about the concept of moralisc therapeuc D ism. I
know there's a lot in that and hopefully you don't to me outright away hearing that I want to explain this
to you. This is a concept that came out of a book from 2005, so a few years ago. But it was research
done with adolescence that Chrisan Smith and Denton coauthors, they wrote on this topic of really
what was the prevailing worldview or even religion of adolescence at that me within the US. And so
the research was done over about a four year period and was published in a book called soul searching.
It's fascinang to read, kind of towards the end of the book as they explain the concept of moralisc,
therapeutic theism. So let me read their words to you. They say, we advance our thesis somewhat
tentatively as less than a conclusive fact, but more than mere conjecture. We suggest that the de facto
dominant religion among contemporary US teenagers is what we might well call moralisc, therapeutic
D ism. The creed of this religion is codied from what emerged from our interviews. Sounds something
like this. And so I'm gonna read you, there are ve kinds of descripons of moralisc therapeutic DSM.
And then we're going to talk about the concept moralism, moralisc, therapeuc in theism as well. The
ve aspects they say a God exists who created in orders the world, in watches over human life on Earth.
That's the rst basically mindset they'd say, encapsulated in this idea of moralisc, therapeuc theism,
The second God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by
most world religions. Three, the central goal of life is to be happy and to be free or to be happy and to
feel good about oneself. For God does not need to be parcularly involved in one's life except when God
is needed to resolve a problem. Then ve good people go to heaven when they die. Now think about
those concepts, the authors would say, no one is necessarily going to use that term to say this is the
religion that I hold to. And yet those ve descriptors are really what these adolescents were saying.
