From the excel­lent reli­gious jour­nal­ism site The Reveal­er is Scott Kor­b’s review of the new book by the Nation­al Sur­vey of Youth and Reli­gion (I talked about the sur­vey a month ago). It’s an great review, made bet­ter by the friend­ly dis­agree­ment in the com­men­tary. But what struck me was his use of the terms “ther­a­peu­tic indi­vid­u­al­ism” and “moral­is­tic ther­a­peu­tic deism.”

The authors first iden­ti­fy the social con­texts in which ado­les­cents live and believe, start­ing with a dis­cus­sion of ther­a­peu­tic indi­vid­u­al­ism, a set of assump­tions and com­mit­ments that “pow­er­ful­ly defines every­day moral and rela­tion­al codes and bound­aries in the Unit­ed States.” Per­son­al expe­ri­ence is what shapes our notions of truth, and truth is found nowhere else but in hap­pi­ness and pos­i­tive self-esteem.

In reli­gious terms, accord­ing to teenagers, 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.
But we’re not talk­ing about the teenagers here, are we? The review hints that this is the con­di­tion of the adults too, only we’re bet­ter at couch­ing it in more con­vinc­ing­ly religious-sounding lan­guage. Did I say I attend­ed two days of Philadel­phia Year­ly Meet­ing ses­sions this week­end? More to come.