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Comment By Abe
Bergen
‘Will our children have faith?’
That was the question posed by John Westerhof in a
book by the same title in 1976. It’s a question which still
challenges the church today. In fact, there may be more cause for concern
and alarm now. Recent studies on teenagers in the U.S. and Canada suggest
that, if teens have faith at all, it is a generic, shallow kind of belief
– a faith which will not enable them to deal with the challenges of
our increasingly secular age.
Faith lite
A recent U.S. National Study on Teenagers and Religion1 found that teens who belong to
religious groups have an extremely weak spiritual understanding about their
faith – with the majority not knowing the basics of what their
religion teaches. As reported by author Christian Smith in Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American
Teenagers, the study describes the belief
system of many teens as ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.’ Its
basic tenets are:
• 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 by most world religions.
• The central goal in life is to be happy and
feel good about oneself.
God does not need to be involved in my life, except
when I need him to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.
Although based on a U.S. study, I suspect that these
things are not so different in Canada.
How did church-going teens end up this way?
Parental impact
The study indicated that the most important influence
and predictor of the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their
parents. Far from seeking their own spiritual paths, teenagers follow their
parents’ footsteps when it comes to religion.
(In Canada, about 80 percent of
teens say they are highly influenced by their parents, and about 70
percent want to have a home like the one they grew up in.)
Role models & teaching
In other words, the beliefs of the parents get passed
down to the children. Our values, attitudes and beliefs about things like
God, the divinity of Jesus, life after death, love, sexuality, values and
ethics will be picked up by them. According to Reginald Bibby, the
University of Lethbridge sociologist who has been surveying
teenagers’ attitudes towards religion since the 1970s,
“teenagers will become eventually pretty much like the rest of
us.”2
Another major influence on teens having a shallow
faith has been church teaching, in some instances. Wendell Loewen,
associate professor of Youth, Church & Culture at Tabor College (a
Mennonite Brethren college in Hillsboro, Kansas), suggests many teens have
been taught that “salvation is, in essence, a one-time transaction
with God to escape damnation. Christians simply have to read the Bible
more, pray more – and occasionally save souls.”
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The result, he says, is a faith that is
“virtually indistinguishable from its surrounding culture,”
that is “primarily privatized” and “demonstrates a
radical disconnect between belief and lifestyle.”3
Prescription
He goes on to prescribe a “biblical presentation
of the church” as an “alternative culture that invites others
to participate in the reality of God’s reign. Understanding this can
help move students beyond a privatized faith toward a strong desire to
influence the world.”
For Loewen, this reign is most helpfully illustrated
by the image of the kingdom of God. By emphasizing the “reign of
God,” he says, teens will “better be able to see their way out
of their individualized, privatized faith bubbles. They will be able to
wrestle with tangible ways in which they can impact their world. This
discovery can move students beyond an individual and personal faith
emphasis toward one that seeks to tangibly impact the world.”
Church & holistic gospel
For me, the message is clear: If the church
doesn’t live and teach a holistic gospel to our children, they will
end up with a watered down faith – one that simply promotes personal
well-being and teaches them to be nice to one another. It will be a faith
which keeps God on retainer, just in case they run into trouble – but
not one that promotes the importance of deepening the presence of God in
their lives.
Struggling to believe
Fortunately, the students I meet through my work at
Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) are, for the most part, not moralistic
therapeutic deists. Yet they often struggle with how to make their faith
real and vital. For this reason, it is important to challenge them to think
deeply about their faith, to take ownership of their beliefs and to be able
to articulate them. It can be a tough experience, but through it they
discover ways to grow in their relationship with God, and learn how to put
faith into practice through service and action.
As churches and Christian schools, our goal must be to
help youth care equally about evangelism and social action; inner peace
with God and peacemaking; personal spirituality and community; abundant
life and simple living; serving God and serving the poor; praying and doing
justice. We must help them avoid becoming moralistic therapeutic deists. We
should help them learn to know the One who created them, who watches over
all of life – and help them deepen that relationship in such a way
that they will constantly feel God’s presence, as they commit
themselves to serving him in all of life.
Abe Bergen is assistant professor of practical
theology at CMU, specializing in youth ministry.
1 Christian Smith, Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Oxford University Press, 2005.
2 Reginald W. Bibby, Canada’s
Teens: Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow, Stoddart
Publishing, 2001.
3 Wendell Loewen, Thirsty
for the Reign: A Kingdom Theology for Youth Ministry, Direction, Spring 2002.
Options Fall 2007
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