Almost Christian

It took me two months to get through the entire book "Almost Christian," by Kenda Creasy Dean, but it was well worth it. Kenda takes a look at the results of a multi-year study called the National Study of Youth and Religion. The results of this study found that most American Teenagers of faith believe in what has been called, "Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism." This means that most teenagers believe that God wants them to be nice to everyone, that God is here to meet all of our own personal needs, and that God isn't really involved in the day to day stuff but is instead somewhere far off.

"Moralistic Therapeutic Deism makes no pretense at changing lives; it is a low commitment, compartmentalized set of attitudes aimed at "meeting my needs" and "making me happy" rather than bending my life into a pattern of love and obedience to God." (pg. 30)

"MTD is what is left once Christianity has been drained of its missional impulse, once holiness has given way to acculturation, and once cautious self-preservation has supplanted the divine abandon of self-giving love." (pg. 39-40)

While most would see this as a failure of the church to communicate effectively the life transforming work of the gospel, Kenda believes that youth are mirroring back to us exactly what we have taught them. "We have received from teenagers exactly what we have asked them for: assent, not conviction; compliance, not faith." Instead of there being some massive miscommunication between adults and children or the church and youth when it comes to passing on the faith, Kenda argues that most adults believe and live out lives consistent with Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and our youth have actually listened and lived it quite well.

One of the most interesting findings in the National Study of Youth and Religion was that out of all the different denominations and faith groups represented, the Mormon church was the only one cited as actually retaining youth after high school. The reason? They actually expect something from their young people after high school - and before. How many of you have ever had Mormons come to your door? After high school it is expected that they go into the mission field for two years going door to door sharing the faith. Not only does this expectation come from the entire Mormon community but also from the family. The family requires that young people attend seminary every morning before school, meaning that most Mormon youth are up at least two hours before other kids learning the scriptures and the teachings of their faith. Kenda notes that, "separating family and church is inconceivable in Mormon culture," and that, "To Molly (Mormon youth) the purpose of faith formation is mission."

Here are some fun Mormon stats from the book to chew on:

"more than half of all Mormon teens give presentations twice a year to the congregation, half participated in a meeting where they were part of making the decisions, they assume their contributions of public testimony, fasting, baptisms, and blessings actually matter." (pg. 55-56)

"Mormon youth are 70% more likely to go on mission trips, share their faith, participate in youth group, and speak about their faith publicly in a religious service." (pg. 57)

So where most mainline protestant churches have consistently lowered the bar of challenges in hopes of bringing in more youth, the Mormon church has raised the bar and expected more from them. This resonates with Kenda's other book, "Practicing Passion: Youth and the Quest for a Passionate Church," where she talks about how teenagers are looking for something worth pouring their whole lives into, something worth living and dying for, something risky.

"Like Esau, American Christians tend to think with our stomachs, devouring whatever smells good in order to keep our inner rumblings at bay, oblivious even to our own misgivings. American Christians are a restless people who come to church for the same reasons people once went to a diner: for someone to serve us who knows our name, for a filling stew that reminds us of home and makes us feel loved, even while it does a number on our spiritual cholesterol." (pg. 8)

"Put simply, churches have lost track of Christianity's missional imagination." (pg. 37)

I would be leading others astray if I believed that all we need to do is raise the bar at church and it will be filled with passionate and devoted young people. Every survey I can find, including the National Study of Youth and Religion, cites a young persons parents as the BIGGEST factor in their faith formation. That being said, I wonder often why we have not returned to what Martin Luther originally set out to do before the Reformation, and that was to educate and equip PARENTS to pass on the faith to their children. Kenda writes, "We have not invested in their (youths) bank accounts: we "teach" young people baseball, but we "expose" them to faith." "Luther was convinced that Christian formation began with youth ministry and he was convinced that youth ministry started at home." Now I know most parents and adults fear this role, and sometimes are even afraid of young people in general. However, Kenda reminds us in her book that, "What awakens faith is desire, not information, and what awakens desire is a person - and specifically, a person who accepts us unconditionally, as God accepts us." She goes on to say that, "We fall prey to the myth that teaching is a display of competence rather than an act of love."

Let's be honest. Many youth find themselves in situations where love at home, or at church, is in short supply. Some youth in the study still came through as highly devoted even though the odds seemed stacked against them. Kenda points out that highly devoted young people seem adept at using at least four cultural tools in ways that mark them as members of their traditions:

1 They confess their tradition's creed, or God-story

2 They belong to a community that enacts the God-story

3 They feel called by this story to contribute to a larger purpose

4 They have hope for the future promised by this story.

5 They also have families and churches that model that these tools matter.

Kids may repeat the creeds at church once a week, but if they are not lifted up at home they will see the pledge of allegiance at school to a flag as more important. Through scripture reading at home families should encounter what God has done and see needs in their own communities to be addressed. Families should call communities of faith out when they are not living up to what God has called them to do and be in the world. No matter how many times the church talks about vocation and God's calling on a young person's life, it won't have near the impact if parents are constantly talking about jobs and careers implying that they are simply ways to make money and buy more stuff. If our congregations are not sharing with young people God's redemptive plan for our communities and the world why should a young person want to be involved? Why would church look any different than any other philanthropic organization?

Passing on the faith requires being bilingual. Kenda talks about our dual role of speaking both the language of the culture and the language of faith when she writes;

"Unless the church cultivates a behind the wall conversation that reminds young people who they are, who they belong to, why they are here, and where their future hope lies-unless we hand on a tradition that gives them cultural tools to help them lay claim to this alternate vision of reality-then the empire's conversation is the only view of reality they have." (pg. 115)

We have to remember as parents and mentors to young people that there are thousands of other gods competing for their attention and trying to convince them that their story is THE story. These gods demand worship, sacrifices, and obedience but are false gods nonetheless. One of the surprising findings was that highly devoted youth tend to use the name of Jesus more than any of the other youth interviewed. So in a sense we have to speak Jesus name before we may really believe, or understand, what Jesus is doing in us. Or as Thomas Long contends that we, "talk ourselves into being Christian." Long sees talking about Jesus Christ as actually deepening our identity as people who follow him, while at the same time sharing Christ's call to others.

"Since youth do not hear a language of faith, they do not speak one. The "God-talk" young people do absorb from the surrounding culture is much closer to what the homiletician Thomas Long calls "God chatter," rather than a usable vocabulary of faith. Without a narrative to give such chatter coherence and meaning, teenagers are left to cobble together a patchwork religious system, borrowed-not from deeply anchored faith traditions or a growing recognition of God's activity in the world-but from appealing parts of a number of myths Americans live by." (pg.138)

Kenda mentions that conversational Christianity requires Jesus-talk, not just God-talk and cites Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann who maintain that conversation is the most important vehicle we have for maintaining a reality. Smith and Denton, who led the National Study of Youth and Religion, cite the philosopher Charles Taylor who believes,"inarticulacy undermines the possibilities of reality" and warns that "religious faith, practice, and commitment can be no more than vaguely real when people cannot talk much about them."

So as not to leave us totally in the dark with how to translate the faith to young people, Kenda gives us some guidelines;

1. the best translators are people, not programs.

2. The best translators are bilingual. (culture & God's story)

3. The best translators invoke imagination.

4. Translation can threaten the people in charge.

"We frequently say, 'the church has a mission,' according to missional theology a more correct statement would be 'God's mission has a church.'" - Alan Hirsch (pg. 91)

So what would it look like for most denominations to start rejecting Moralistic Theraputic Deism and start living transformed, articulate, missional lives for the world? Whatever it looks like young people are watching and waiting for something worth their lives.

"Do we know ourselves to belong to the One who made us, who loves us too much to lose us, and do we live as though this matters?"- Kenda Creasy Dean.