Nearer My Gold Card, To Thee

From July 2002 to March 2003, the National Survey of Youth and Religion (NSYR) conducted 3,290 national, random telephone surveys of American teenagers. The NSYR followed up in the spring and summer of 2003 with 267 in-depth interviews with a subsample of those teenagers in 45 states. The results comprise the largest sociological study of adolescent religiosity ever conducted, "Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers" (Oxford University Press, 2005).

A most interesting summary of that book's contents is here, but some are worth repeating in this space:

The overwhelming majority of American teenagers are so NOT in rebellion. They are basically just like their parents: they say they believe in God without being able to articulate much at all about what God expects of them. They are utterly conventional in their assumptions. But their assumptions, say the authors of the book, are undermining historical Christianity much more successfully -- and rapidly -- than all the other works of Satan, combined.

Why? Because American Christianity has become so thoroughly the handmaiden of American capitalism (with the explicit blessing of both political parties over many decades). That is to say, the real religion of America is something the authors call "therapeutic individualism." The chief doctrine of "therapeutic individualism": "God cares that each teenager is happy and that each teenager has high self-esteem. Morality has nothing to do with authority, mutual obligations, or sacrifice. In a sense, God wants little more for us than to be good, happy capitalists."

God is a happy consumer, and He's made us in his image. If we're not happy, it's because we haven't consumed enough, or we're consuming the wrong brands.

"And to be happy capitalists, we should be good, unless being good prevents us from being happy."

Got it!

The authors of this book are a bit depressed, not because American teenagers are rebelling against the values held by their parents but precisely because American teenagers are NOT rebelling against the values held by their parents. And these "mainstream" values are killing American religion (if not American democracy). Here's the new catechism: "God exists and watches over human life, which was created by God. God wants people to be nice, as it says in the bible and in most world religions. God does not have to be involved in our lives except to solve our problems and make us happy. Good people will be even happier in heaven after they die. The religious beliefs of American teens tend to be -- as a whole, across all traditions -- that simple."

It's not only "simple." It's positively childish.

And it's the perfect reflection of El Presidente's style of government: we can have tax cuts for the rich, huge new government programs, several wars, and NOBODY HAS TO SACRIFICE ... "a parasitic creed," as the authors of this book on teenagers define it.