I plan to read Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, in preparation for a potential ministry I’ll be working on at Holy Cross College. Here’s an interesting excerpt (from a summary written by the book’s author, Christian Smith):

[W]e suggest that the de facto dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in the United States is what we might call “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.” The creed of this religion, as codified from what emerged from our interviews with U.S. teenagers, sounds something like this:

1. A God exists who created and orders 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 he is needed to resolve a problem.

5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

I’ll post again when I’ve finished the work.

-J.