America’s New Default Setting: Decadent Pietism

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Painting: The Consummation of Empire by Thomas Cole, 1836

Over twenty years ago, sociologist Christian Smith discerned what he saw as the prevailing worldview among American teenagers and adults. He offered abundant evidence that, far from reflecting deep engagement with biblical truth and historic Christian orthodoxy, the religious views of Americans were shallow and vague. The name he posited for this informal set of beliefs is “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

The essential elements of this creed are that God exists and oversees the world, that He desires people to be nice and fair, that life’s central goals are happiness and self-esteem, that the individual needs God only when problems in life arise, and that good people go to heaven when they die. This hodgepodge is even less biblical than the views held by many American Founding Fathers, who are often (incorrectly) thought to have been pure Deists.

Smith’s work offers a salient exposure of the American church’s failures in discipleship. While rightly concerned about numbers and relevance, modern church leadership relied on technological gimmicks and pragmatic techniques to maintain and expand their flocks. Preaching often focused on addressing the “felt needs” of the congregations, rather than inviting them into a deeper exploration of the Bible and classical Christian doctrine. It is not difficult to understand how the theology “on-the-ground” in America is but a shadow of what existed under the bold teaching of preachers like Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Francis Asbury, and Isaac Backus.

While this is certainly problematic for any Christian concerned about our faithful witness, I would argue that it pales in comparison to the default religious setting for America that I have seen emerging in the present culture. I offer these observations, not as a professional sociologist, but as a small-church pastor with twenty years’ “on-the-ground” experience and with a head for observing and reflecting on cultural trends. I engage regularly in conversations with pastors of various backgrounds, I see what is coming out of many seminaries today, and I sense the agenda of blatantly blending biblical motifs with hot-button issues of the Leftist elites. Barring an act of God and a major reboot of Christian urgency, the new default setting of American religion is, and will continue to be, “Decadent Pietism.”

I borrow the name from Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde, who coined it in 1987.  While I disagree with Forde on fundamental philosophical and doctrinal issues, his description is a prophetic characterization of what I am now seeing, even in some denominations once labeled “conservative.”  With apologies, I quote him at length.

[Some Christians] who came to this country were for the most part pietists of one stamp or another.  Under the pressure of American Arminianism, Personalism, psychologism, individualism, human potential movements, and whatnot, pietism simply becomes decadent.

The old pietism thought it vital first of all “to get right with God” through the experience of grace in conversion. But now, since God is, in general, love and no longer wrathful with anyone, God more or less drops out of the picture as a serious factor with which to be contended. Since God is now “affirming” in general, the task is to “get right with oneself.”

The old pietism contended that conversion was to be manifest in a morally upright life…Decadent pietism seems to hold that the way of the Christian is to become “affirming” of others in their chosen lifestyles. Along with this there is very often a rather sanctimonious “third use of the law” piety centered mostly around current social causes and problems.

No longer concerned with one’s own sins, and certainly not the sins of those one is supposed to affirm, one shifts attention to the sins of those other entities (more or less anonymous) that inhibit the realization of our affirmed and affirming human potential. Generally, these [inhibiting entities] are summed up under the rubric of “the establishment” or perhaps personified by those who happen to be in power.

This description has commonalities with Smith’s Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, yet it goes beyond it in three crucial respects. First, it is more divorced from a rational approach to life, rooting its “spirituality” in one’s subjective feelings and experiences without any corrective from a Truth beyond oneself. Then, as the second half of Forde’s quote describes, it includes an activist and collectivist component, urging its adherents to participate in a radical critique of the existing order. Finally, its “sanctimonious third use of the law” evinces an even greater self-righteousness in its adherents, which then is directed against those who refuse to be allies in their cause du jour.

One of the clearest manifestations of this now is the Senate candidacy of Democrat James Talarico from Texas. A former seminarian, Talarico unashamedly and publicly uses the Bible (and extrabiblical texts) to justify his leftist positions on abortion, radical feminism, economics, and “transing the kids,” to the point of declaring that Jesus Himself was “non-binary.” From what I’ve seen, he would be perfectly willing to confess the “Sparkle Creed.” As a mild-mannered white Christian male, he is promoted by Democrats because they see an opportunity to make inroads in a red state, and, I think, they sense that Talarico’s views are more consonant with younger Christians. They believe they can woo more evangelicals away from the Republican party.

In a recent Washington Post opinion piece, theologian Carl Trueman argued that Talarico’s brand of Christianity is dying and, therefore, is dismissive of him as a serious threat. He cites as evidence the demise of liberal Protestantism as a genuine cultural force. Indeed, “mainline” denominations are bleeding out members (through either death or desertion) at a growing rate every year. Trueman is correct to argue that mainline Protestants’ capitulation to contemporary trends has left many Westerners asking the question: If the church’s message is largely indistinguishable from other cultural voices, why bother sticking with the church at all?

Reading Trueman’s article might cause one to doubt the seriousness of my concerns (and to be fair, I don’t think Talarico is a serious threat…yet). But remember, I’m more concerned with the “on-the-ground” spiritual beliefs that are already emerging among the American people. The institutions that officially confess Talarico’s views may be declining, but that does not mean his mélange of milquetoast Christianity and Leftist politics is declining. One self-proclaimed conservative evangelical and opinion columnist at the New York Times—David French—is apparently willing to engage with and even praise it.

French has been a trenchant critic of Donald Trump, not so much for his actual policies, but because he fails to come across as sufficiently winsome, agreeable, and “decent.” Trump has championed causes that other Christian presidents were unwilling to touch: overturning Roe v. Wade, actively supporting civilization over barbarism in the Middle East, pushing back against the trans agenda, and championing school choice and parental rights. However, because Trump’s demeanor is often brash and boorish, operating with an “outside-the-beltway” mentality, French apparently sees him as Public Enemy Number One.

French’s version of Christianity exists in the pietistic realm of feelings, emphasizing niceness over truthfulness and seeking the esteem of others (including one’s ideological opponents) over conformity to God’s moral standards. The result? French affirms Talarico as a decent Christian who lives out his faith, even though his theology is reprobate and his public moral utterances are reprehensible. French is willing to compromise on fundamental Biblical teachings to preserve what he believes is the only acceptable Christian posture towards others. His subjective sense of a person’s “decency” is more important to him than his objective discernment of truth. I have heard French claim that his deepest desire is for all Americans to find a relationship with Jesus, but the question is, which Jesus does he expect them to find?

French is one of many examples I could cite: a decidedly leftward drift of “Big Eva” platforms like the Gospel Coalition; “Side A Christians” like Matthew Vines and Justin Lee who are shifting the stance of many believers on issues related to human sexuality; and even conservative seminaries that are experiencing a precipitous decline in M.Div. students, meaning that whatever leadership the church has in the future will not be trained to discern cultural trends or guard doctrines and ethics well.

American culture is becoming increasingly unmoored from its biblical roots. If winsomeness is all evangelical Christians have to offer in return, our culture will slouch even more towards Gomorrah (to borrow Judge Robert Bork’s phrase). Despite the rhetorical and political wins of the Trump administration and the growing irrelevance of legacy media, consider what remains largely unchanged:

• The colleges and universities that will produce tomorrow’s leaders are still dominated by postmodern philosophy, a deliberate combination of nihilism and socialism, often couched in the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion. This anti-worldview continues to shape the content of much university curricula across the country.
• Most children and teenagers still attend government schools, with all the additional time commitments (team sports, extracurricular activities, etc.) which accompany that. This means even Christian kids with faithful parents are still being formed intellectually and socially (at least to an extent) by the agenda of bureaucrats. The current victories of school choice advocates at the state level are admirable, but it will be a long time for the effects of those policies to ripple into the cultural landscape.
• The wider culture is deliberately presenting us with a choice between two caricatures of a Christian: the “cool” Christian like Talarico who sees Jesus as one who would affirm and accept every conceivable identity and lifestyle, and the “backward” Christian who supposedly hates everyone who is not like him. This false binary offers an emotional (not intellectual) incentive to drift away from the Bible’s clear ethical teachings in the name of empathy and inclusion.
• The conservative movement itself is now splintering, and younger people (including some Christian young people) are sympathetic to a postmodern “woke right” whose philosophical underpinnings are just as nefarious as its leftist counterpart. It is sanctimonious, radically activist, and anti-establishment in the most basic sense: it hates the American regime as it was originally constituted. (See this essay for details.)

In my opinion, all of this adds up to the kind of Decadent Pietism that Gerhard Forde rightly foresaw. Many Americans will still hold on to a few trappings of our religious heritage; namely, the consolations that it offers, such as the existence of some kind of God and the reality of an afterlife where they can reconnect with their loved ones. But their moral centers will be shaped by a culture that is even more nihilist, socialist, and activist than when Christian Smith offered his initial observations.

Some readers might cite evidence to the contrary: recent polling that young men seem to be returning to religion (specifically more traditional varieties) and Bible purchases are skyrocketing. I do not deny these trends, and I hope they are signs that I may be wrong. But what remains unclear is whether these same individuals will connect with a truly biblical church that offers the means of grace and a robust discipleship in God’s moral law.

I authored this article because it is important to name a reality that is already upon us. Remember, I offer it only as a hypothesis, but I believe it will continue to metastasize until a more fundamental revolution takes place in American life. Political revolutions and realignments are good as far as they go, but they are usually temporary and they simply cannot address the deeper decline of America’s mores and values that I have been observing. We need the kind of revolution described by President John Adams: “in the hearts and minds of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations.”

In the end, Decadent Pietism (like Moralistic Therapeutic Deism) is a hodgepodge of emotional concepts, not a systematic approach to life rooted in reality and reason. As such, it will most likely morph into something even more nefarious. A growing number of neo-integralist intellectuals are ready to steer the American people in the direction of a religious dictatorship… for the “common good,” of course! To avoid this, Christians must commit to a rational defense of the idea of America as it was originally constituted, which led not only to the freest country on earth, but also to the most benevolent embodiment of Christianity since the early church.

This requires more than pragmatic tinkering with church structures or evangelistic techniques. What is required is a long-term commitment to developing a new generation of Christian intellectuals armed and willing to stand up to Decadent Pietism with biblical Christian doctrine. A generation able to articulate a Christian defense of reason and individualism. A great deal of my current work and research is intended as a response to Decadent Pietism, and I know of one great book that is absolutely necessary in this fight. If you haven’t yet, read it!

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