Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and Post-Christian America

In 2005, an overlooked study by two sociologists examined the spiritual lives of American teenagers (13-19) from a wide variety of backgrounds. What they found (and please realize that this study is now indicative of adults 23-35) was that in most cases our culture adhered to a pseudo-religion researchers call Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD).

MTD has 5 basic tenets (read carefully)…

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth. (This will become deism as you read the rest of the list)
2. God wants people to be good, nice and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions. (Note soteriology at this point)
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. (Note view of depravity)
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in ones life except when he is needed to solve a problem. (Note the dismissing of providence, transcendence and immanence)
5. Good people go to heaven when they die. (Note again soteriology)

Obviously, these are not the five points of the Remonstrants or the Calvinists…

MTD is the de facto religion of America. This has grown and entrenched itself in the American Church psyche over the last 15 years. It is why we must begin to acknowledge reality and reprioritize and re-strategize our real concerns…

We have lost the culture war…

We have lost true (biblically based) conservatism…

We have lost the debate over objective truth…

We have affirmed situational ethics…

We are losing (or have lost) biblical fidelity in many self-identified evangelical churches…

We are in a post-Christian America (some say it is now officially “neo-pagan”)…

We are maintaining a biblical worldview by a thread (according to Barna research)…

This is unarguable in America…

The sooner we simply admit reality, the sooner we can reset, renew, reevaluate, and re-strategize the command to engage the culture and nation.

The first step is to strategically pause and set in place immediately a plan to preserve the historic, orthodox, biblical faith in every willing church and family. In other words, what are we doing to PRESERVE the Christian Faith?

If we don’t have a revival of sound biblical doctrine, sound biblical practices, and sound biblical worldview…

It is game over…

No matter how politically zealous you may be…

“Thus says the LORD: “Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it. ’”

Jeremiah 6:16 NKJV