Posted on 08/28/2010 7:58:04 AM PDT by markomalley
Here's some disturbing news about religious trends among teenagers -- what you might call Teenage Mutant Ninja Christianity.
From CNN:
Read the rest.If you're the parent of a Christian teenager, Kenda Creasy Dean has this warning:
Your child is following a "mutant" form of Christianity, and you may be responsible.
Dean says more American teenagers are embracing what she calls "moralistic therapeutic deism." Translation: It's a watered-down faith that portrays God as a "divine therapist" whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.
Dean is a minister, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and the author of "Almost Christian," a new book that argues that many parents and pastors are unwittingly passing on this self-serving strain of Christianity.
She says this "imposter'' faith is one reason teenagers abandon churches.
"If this is the God they're seeing in church, they are right to leave us in the dust," Dean says. "Churches don't give them enough to be passionate about."
Dean drew her conclusions from what she calls one of the most depressing summers of her life. She interviewed teens about their faith after helping conduct research for a controversial study called the National Study of Youth and Religion.
The study, which included in-depth interviews with at least 3,300 American teenagers between 13 and 17, found that most American teens who called themselves Christian were indifferent and inarticulate about their faith.
The study included Christians of all stripes -- from Catholics to Protestants of both conservative and liberal denominations. Though three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, fewer than half practice their faith, only half deem it important, and most can't talk coherently about their beliefs, the study found.
Many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good -- what the study's researchers called "moralistic therapeutic deism."
lulz, Dean is just upset that teens are following any type Christianity....... =.=
If true, people are in for one *hell* of a disappointment. God made us in His image. Efforts to reverse the process will invariably prove futile.
No God wants you to repent and accept his son Jesus Christ as savior.
13 through 17 year olds are inarticulate and indifferent.
Who knew?
bookmark
It’s the “Rick Warren-Joel Olsteen-Robert Schuller-Let’s all feel good” plan for salvation. These hucksters are leading people to an eternity of suffering by telling them God wants them to feel good. “And while you’re at it, donate some money so my ministry can reach around the world and help others feel good.” When in truth, the devil is more than happy to make you feel good today for your soul tomorrow.
Most teens can't (or won't) talk coherently about *anything*, even Scandinavian death metal drum technique. They just look at you, rather like catz, and wait for you to get distracted so they can leave.
The fruit of lack of parental involvement and the failed experiment called “youth groups.” Our children are being fed this stuff and then we’re disappointed when they don’t embrace our faith. Ken Ham has had some great material on this recently. In our churches, we teach our young people “Bible stories” and then they go to the government schools and learn all about how the Bible is wrong with “scientific facts”. They are young adults, yet we put them in “youth groups” where they are able to act like little kids.
All the studies I’ve seen in recent years indicate that 90+% of youth leave the church after they graduate from high school. How can we reach the world when we can’t even reach our own kids?
bookmark
1. This sentence is a wonderful example of the immense difference a comma can make.
2. What you say (comma included) is true, but in the context of today's teens it's not a very helpful statement. They want to know why they should do that. Do you have a good answer? I've learned that teens are surprisingly adept at identifying platitudes, and they're very cynical about both those platitudes and the people who spout them.
In many respects we're living in a post-Christian society. Christian ideas no longer carry the weight they used to; worse, we Christians seem to have lost the ability to answer everyday questions. We tend to take for granted that everybody shares our Christian ideals -- but younger people increasingly do not.
Don't blame the kids for that -- it's our fault. Christianity has gotten fat and lazy. The real task is to get us back to a place where our answers actually have meaning to the people we're trying to reach.
Hmmmm..... Not my experience. I've found that a lot of the teens I meet are smart, well-spoken, and capable of making uncomfortably cogent observations about the world around them.
That was a bit of a joke - my oldest boy is being a pill.
The better question is: why does the Christian message fail to resonate? Not just with our kids, but with the world at large?
Is it really a failure of the Message? Or is it instead a failure of the messenger? Are we perhaps focusing on things other than what Jesus Christ would have said and done?
I’m worried that my high school aged son will not go to church in college. However, I think he will end up going to church when he has kids.
I also think he will send his kids to a private Christian school. He attends a private Christian high school, and he loves it. He hated the public middle school that he attended.
My daughters attended a private Christian school for 4-6 grades. They transferred to another Christian school (my son’s) for 7th. They said the new school was better about applying Biblical principals to everyday life. The Bible was not just stories at the new school.
I wish my son had gone to the Christian school for middle school. I think public middle school poisoned him spiritually.
lol!
I think that too many of us take our kids to church, but do not live out Biblical principles in our daily lives.
I know I am definitely guilty of that. Maybe we parents are hypocrits.
I know I turned to God when things go bad (illnesses, job loss, etc), but I don’t know how fervently I seek God during the good times.
He’s afraid that, if he starts out by engaging in conversation about drumming or the Jerry Doyle show, the discussion might veer toward, “Did you finish that English paper? What math lessons did you do today? Oh, look! The lawn is coming in through the windows!”
The high schoolers I know are well-spoken. The middle schoolers are not.
Excellent posts, r9etb!
If we want our children to go to church ... or more importantly, to *be Christians* ... they have to see that our (their parents’) faith is a crucial element in their lives. If we go to church and participate in activities, service, Christian education, and so on, our children should see that we’re doing this because we want to. They should see that we make certain choices and reject others because we love God. They should see that we show fortitude in adversity, with an eye toward eternity.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.