{"id":3727,"date":"2010-08-17T07:51:16","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T12:51:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=3727"},"modified":"2010-12-26T23:59:47","modified_gmt":"2010-12-27T05:59:47","slug":"mtd-moralistic-therapeutic-deism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/08\/17\/mtd-moralistic-therapeutic-deism\/","title":{"rendered":"MTD: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Christian Smith and Melinda Denton, investigators for the National Study of Youth and Religion, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.christiancentury.org\/article.lasso?id=8654\" target=\"_blank\">see an alternative faith in American teenagers<\/a>, one that &#8220;feeds on and gradually co-opts if not devours&#8221; established religious traditions: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD).<\/p>\n<p>If teenagers wrote out the creed of this religious outlook, it would look something like this:<br \/>\n\u2022 A god exists who created and orders the world and watches over life on earth.<br \/>\n\u2022 God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.<br \/>\n\u2022 The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.<br \/>\n\u2022 God is not involved in my life except when I need God to solve a problem.<br \/>\n\u2022 Good people go to heaven when they die.<\/p>\n<p>If churches practice MTD in the name of Christianity, then getting teenagers to come to church more often is not the solution (it could make things worse). The solution to MTD is not more faithful attendance, but a more faithful church.<\/p>\n<p>(Source: Christian Century)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christian Smith and Melinda Denton, investigators for the National Study of Youth and Religion, see an alternative faith in American teenagers, one that &#8220;feeds on and gradually co-opts if not devours&#8221; established religious traditions: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[380],"class_list":["post-3727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-youth","tag-the-christian-century"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>MTD: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism - Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2010\/08\/17\/mtd-moralistic-therapeutic-deism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MTD: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism - Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Christian Smith and Melinda Denton, investigators for the National Study of Youth and Religion, see an alternative faith in American teenagers, one that &quot;feeds on and gradually co-opts if not devours&quot; 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