Soul Searching

Soul Searching Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 346pp. In a country regularly chastised for its inappropriate, even idolatrous obsession with precious little out there that is truly helpful to Christians in understanding the dynamics of this modern phenomenon. Christianparents of teens, and those who minister to both parents and teens, would be greatly served by a capable study of this topic, and in my view we have an interesting, though somewhat startling, contribution in Soul Searching. This book is a study of, as the subtitle puts i interviews, but the writers do a wonderful job at keeping the book from becoming a statistical manual. Instead, theyrefreshingly stick to their main concern: understanding the religious views of young people in this country. To this end, they interviewed hundreds of teens from widely different ethnic, geographical, religious, and economic backgrounds and contexts, and assessed this information in light of the findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion. The result is a useful and recommended tool forinterpreting American teenage culture. Beyond this general benefit, however, OPC members will find another, more distinctively Reformed reason for welcoming this book. If for no other reason, it is important for its stinging indictment on our eternal optimism as moderns really going on, behind those eyes, spiritually speaking, in this stage of personal maturation and s assumption that the teenagerever-curious, ever-passionate, and ever-questioning is a relatively uncommitted spiritual seeker. Like rushing water, the teen needs only to be guided in the right direction in order to be useful rather than destructive. But is the teen truly an uncommitted seeker, or is there more to the story of their wide-ranging religious sensibilities and interests? The authors of Soul Searching demonstratecompellingly that the answer to this question is not just surprising; it is also dark. Their thesis, based on wide ranging surveys and interviews, is that contemporary American teenagers have moved toward a faith which may be termed Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD), helpfully summarized on pp. 162-71. Even after responsibly accounting for , authors are convinced there is indeed a discernible, definablebody of belief that functions They summarize its features along the three lines indicated by its name. It is a religion that is, first and foremost, deeply1moralistic. The moral of the human story is to pursue the good of being happy, and for the average American teen this comes to the nice and the kind, the pleasant and the self-motivated. As such MTD is a deeply inclusivist religion, since allreligions share this concern for the good, moral life. In addition to a basic moralism, though, MTD is also 2humanitarian. It is concerned for well-being, and, most

importantly, this is typically understood in therapeutic terms. The problems of life, most American teens apparently believe, have little or nothing to do with classically understood, but with subjective wellness. In light of thesurveys they conducted, the common faith in the quest to feel happy (p. 164). It appears reveling in the ambiguities really does inhibit traditional concern for a confession of faith. And this leads, rather 3 naturally, to the third feature of MTD: it is idolatrous, having substituted the true God for a false one the authors write, is a belief in a particular kind of God: one who exists, created theworld, and defines our general moral order, but especially affairs in which one would prefer not to have God involved. Most of the time, the God of this faith keeps a safe distance (p. 164). For good reason, then, the authors have termed this faith referring to the belief in a god who created the world, set it in motion, and then essentially withdrew from it, leaving it to operate mostly on its...