Two factors creating today\u2019s crisis of faith are familiar to most of us: \u201cscientific fundamentalism,\u201d which asserts that the only path to truth is through the empirical scientific method and the natural sciences, and \u201csecular messianism,\u201d which imagines the world to be perfectible by human agency alone. Archbishop Vigneron identified a third factor impeding or corroding faith today, \u201cmoralistic therapeutic deism.\u201d He writes:<\/p>\n
This term was famously coined by two sociologists to describe the amorphous set of religious beliefs to which many American young people subscribe. This belief system is moralistic in that it emphasizes moral behavior, vaguely defined as being nice, kind, pleasant, respectful, responsible, and so on. It is therapeutic in that it envisions God as on call to take care of problems that arise in our lives, but not otherwise interested in us nor holding us accountable for our choices. It is deistic in that it views God as having created the world but not personally involved in it. Such views fall short of the Christian understanding of God, who does hold us accountable, who gave his Son for us to save us from the devastating consequences of sin, and who desires to be deeply involved in our lives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The Church of Nice is not the Church of Jesus Christ, who came \u201cto cast fire upon the earth\u201d and longed to see it blaze up [Luke 12.49]. Yes, the Church of Jesus Christ is the Church of the merciful father, who restores to the prodigal son the squandered dignity of his sonship. But the condition for the possibility of the son\u2019s receiving the father\u2019s forgiveness is the son\u2019s recognition of his need for forgiveness\u2014the son\u2019s recognition that he had been reduced to foraging for swine\u2019s fodder by his self-indulgent self-sufficiency.<\/p>\n
There are signs all around us of Christian communities domesticating God by trimming their doctrinal and moral sails to the prevailing mores of the postmodern West<\/strong>. <\/p>\n