Saturday, December 20, 2008

Come On, We Know This: You Can Lead A Teen To NewAge (But You Can't Make Them Think)

"When Christian Smith and his fellow researchers with the National Study of Youth and Religion at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill took a close look at the religious beliefs held by American teenagers, they found that the faith held and described by most adolescents came down to something the researchers identified as 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.'

As described by Smith and his team, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism consists of beliefs like these: 1. 'A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.' 2. 'God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.' 3. 'The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.' 4. 'God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.' 5. 'Good people go to heaven when they die.'

That, in sum, is the creed to which much adolescent faith can be reduced. After conducting more than 3,000 interviews with American adolescents, the researchers reported that, when it came to the most crucial questions of faith and beliefs, many adolescents responded with a shrug and 'whatever.'

As a matter of fact, the researchers, whose report is summarized in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Eyes of American Teenagers by Christian Smith with Melinda Lundquist Denton, found that American teenagers are incredibly inarticulate about their religious beliefs, and most are virtually unable to offer any serious theological understanding. As Smith reports, 'To the extent that the teens we interviewed did manage to articulate what they understood and believed religiously, it became clear that most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe, or they do understand it and simply do not care to believe it. Either way, it is apparent that most religiously affiliated U.S. teens are not particularly interested in espousing and upholding the beliefs of their faith traditions, or that their communities of faith are failing in attempts to educate their youth, or both.'

As the researchers explained, 'For most teens, nobody has to do anything in life, including anything to do with religion. 'Whatever' is just fine, if that's what a person wants.'

The casual 'whatever' that marks so much of the American moral and theological landscapes--adolescent and otherwise--is a substitute for serious and responsible thinking. More importantly, it is a verbal cover for an embrace of relativism."


-- R. Albert Mohler, Jr., who doesn't recognize a version of NewAge when he sees it, on The Christian Post.

3 comments:

  1. American teenagers are incredibly inarticulate about their religious beliefs, and most are virtually unable to offer any serious theological understanding... most religious teenagers either do not really comprehend what their own religious traditions say they are supposed to believe...

    *************

    This is interesting, but not sure why it merits mention - aren't you (Crack Emcee) the same one who argued only a few days ago right here on this blog that:

    A) it's not only completely unnecessary to understand or even familiarize yourself with the basic precepts of the belief systems you write so much about about, but furthermore that

    B) even trying to understand their internal logic is harmful by sheer virtue of the fact that they are belief systems?

    Nuff said on that score.

    As should be evident, these teens aren't "new agers" any more than you are - they're simply intellectually lazy and incurious.

    Understanding would take mental effort they don't care to make.

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  2. These teens are on are a wobbly fence. At their stage of development they struggle with the need for autonomy versus social acceptance and peer pressure.

    They also know being a non-believer is far less acceptable in this society than believing almost anything else, no matter how absurd. So they go along to get along without really embracing the rituals.

    As they grow, some will embrace traditional religion, which halts intellectual growth, and some will fall into NewAge, which reverses intellectual growth.

    Others will remain free to grow their minds and explore the reality of an amazing enough universe that doesn’t require worshiping all-powerful ghosts, bogeymen or the memory of water. Those “belief systems” truly define “intellectually lazy and incurious”.

    Really, how much serious understanding, internal logic or comprehension do you need to watch the movie ‘Ghostbusters’? Amen to that.

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