The name of the blog is a term coined in the book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (2005) by sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. The term is used describe the spiritual belief systems of many youth throughout the country - Christian, Jew, Muslim..etc, The authors describe what many young people believe in several moral statutes not exclusive to any of the major world religions. It is this combination of beliefs that they label Moralistic Therapeutic Deism:
- A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
- God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to heaven when they die.
The ministry goals and approach of myself and my partner in ministry Youth Minister Mary Gorges have been fundamentally changing our approach to ministry as a result of this book and it's moral statutes. Why have they been changed - because we have witnessed these same set of beliefs in our own students. So our mission? To help students to better understand what the Bible teaches and to articulate those teachings, in other words to talk about their faith.
We have set out to change how we do things with the moderate amount of time we have them. We have added journaling, table discussions, repetition and frequent "assessments" to monitor their progress.
So, part of the blog will address our successes and failures as we continue to work with our children, youth and families.
On God's belay,
Thom Nicla
Youth Minister
First United Lutheran Church ELCA
Sheboygan, WI
