Debra Arca Mooney at Patheos has a lengthy Q&A with Kenda Creasy Dean, the author of a book based on a comprehensive of the faith of youth. Dean, a United Methodist, uses a title of a John Wesley sermon, “The Almost Christian,” for the book and study.
The interview and the study itself deserve careful reading and thought.
Dean is distressed by the “watered down” faith mainline churches pass down to young people. Dean describes the dominant spirituality of mainline youth as “moralistic therapeutic deist.” This view is defined by:
- A God exists who created and orders 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 most world religions.
- The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
- God does not need to be involved in my life except when I need God to resolve a problem.
- Good people go to Heaven when they die.
Dean critiques this viewpoint.
So my view is that the self-centered nature of moralistic therapeutic deism is simply contrary to what the purpose of the church is. Theologically, the church is supposed to exist for the world. We don’t exist to perpetuate ourselves or to make ourselves happy. It’s nice if that can happen, but that’s not the purpose. If anything, that might be a fringe benefit. The Gospel story that animates the church is about self-giving love and dying in order to live.
As with so many smart things I read about youth ministry, I Dean’s observations apply across many generations. She points out that young people pick up this faith from their parents and elders in the church.
But Dean finds a cause for hope in the apathy she found among youth.
But if we don’t tell a story that’s worth going to the mat for, then I don’t know why you would necessarily give yourself over to it. So I actually think it’s a good thing teenagers are ho-hum about what they think of Christianity — because that’s notChristianity. It’s a distorted vestige of what Christianity once was. But if the Gospel is presented in full — and by presented I don’t mean just verbally, but lived, in all of its radical implications — I think that will get young people’s attention in ways that moralistic therapeutic deism doesn’t.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
The doctrine of original sin is surely more humbling to man than the opposite: And I know not what honour we can pay to God, if we think man came out of His hands in the condition wherein he is now.
My book, “John Wesley, Natural Man, and the ‘Isms’” covers some of this thought. It discusses what John Wesley thought about natural man, the Roman Catholics, Deists, Quakers, the Jews, and mystics. He discusses where he thinks they went wrong theologically and then whether or not they can be saved. It is interesting how much my book has to say about this discussion.