Christian Smith

And I've read a little bit about things now.

And I remember reading this sociologist, Christian Smith, describing a lot of young people's faith as sort of moralistic, therapeutic deism, which is kind of a handful term.

What does that mean? It's like this kind of idea that like you pray to God and he's kind of like this genie in the sky that maybe he's going to grant you some wishes and make you feel better.

And if I'm honest, when I was young, I think a lot of my faith was kind of based on that.

So let's get to today's episode.

Our guest today is Christian Smith.

Christian is an American sociologist, and he's calling us from southwest Michigan.

He is the William R. Keenan, Jr.

I think there is something... that has been happening and it's hard to tell how long it's been happening.

Uh, you know, the, the, the multi-ethnic church movement has been around for a long time, but I think in terms of it being sort of boxed and conferences and books, you know, probably since the late nineties, certainly by the time Michael Emerson, Christian Smith write their book, uh, divided by faith.

Um, I think the opportunity, it's both a learning and a transformational opportunity that majority culture churches have right now.

And I don't want to just say, like, this is the time to learn, because learning is not a passive thing.

That claim depends entirely on which data set you're using.

Pew's 2024 religious landscape data does put LDS retention around 50%, and that is ahead of most Christian denominations except Catholics and the Orthodox.

But if you look at the general social survey from the same period, their data shows retention closer to 38% to 40%.

And that's down from over 75% through the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

The Cooperative Election Survey estimates a 45% drop in the share of the U.S. population identifying as Mormon between 2014 and 2025.

Though Deseret News disputes that using Pew and Public Religion Research Institute numbers instead.

And Christian Smith, the sociologist the church's newsroom cited approvingly when his research on Mormon retention was favorable between 2005 and 2013.

He later found millennial Mormons exiting in what he called, quote, dramatic unprecedented numbers, end quote.

And so that was sort of, for her, what distinguished her.

So this became really hard as a sociologist on sort of how to categorize the people that I met and interacted with because they have their own self-categorizations that's sometimes different from mine-

Mm-hmm

... and certainly differed from, well, mine in the US, but also mine in the UK, which is also, like, a very different, uh, spectrum of politics.

So how do you, how do you make sense of that for me and for everyone else?

I locate this narrative with- which, uh, within a larger and long-standing narrative that white evangelicals in this country have held for decades, which is that they are persecuted and they are embattled.

In fact, there was even a sociologist, Christian Smith, who wrote a book decades ago called Embattled and Thriving.

Mm.

Now, why am I bringing all this up? And let this give a context here.

Christian Smith is a sociologist.

He used to be out of Chapel Hill in North Carolina.

Now he works at Notre Dame, and he had done this nationwide study or nationwide survey of the moral life of American adolescents or American young adults.

Just, you know, don't hurt anybody.

Then we've given up our freedom.

That's why Christian Smith, I believe, in his, in his research, why Christian Smith and his team concluded that this m- massive number of American young adults had neither the ability nor the categories to make moral decisions, because they didn't see them in terms of right and wrong.

Or e- even if they did, it was just like, "Well, that's wrong." Why? "'Cause I don't like it." So ultimately, morality becomes either a, a matter of preference or utility, right? So e- either right or wrong.

Um, Mother Miriam, Mother Miriam is this, is this elderly nun, and she was telling this story about how before she was a nun, before e- be- before she was a, a Catholic, she was a ...

Uh, she loved Jesus, she was a Christian, and, uh, she needed a job.

And so she saw in want ads that there was a diner that was hiring waitresses and no experience required.

And she says, "Well, I qualify." [laughs] So she went in and she says, "I need this job and I'm qualified.

So I was fascinated by this.

There was a, a sociologist, I may- maybe mentioned it before.

His name is Christian Smith.

Christian Smith used to work at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Here's just one more.

Um, read, uh, Christian Smith from the University of Notre Dame.

He's, um, one of the most, I think, insightful commenters on this, this whole situation.

Um, [laughs] most young Catholics, both affiliated and unaffiliated, will say something like this.

Well, religion seems out of step with science, and if there's a conflict, guess which one's gonna win in the minds of young people.

So the irrationality of religion, at least in their minds, is a major reason.

Here's something from Christian Smith, again, the Notre Dame researcher.

He said 59% of the young disaffiliated that he studied agree with the statement that religion and science are in conflict with each other.