By Bonnie Erbe
A new book warns good Christian parents to beware: Their children may be faking it when they claim to have faith in Christ and are practicing a "mutant" form of Christianity.
While the author, Kenda Creasy Dean, who wrote the book, "Almost Christian," is dead serious, I find the concept more than a mite amusing. From where I sit, all religions are "mutant" in some way, shape or form in that people use religion to satisfy their personal needs.
Since just about every person puts his or her individual take on God, then it follows that every person's version of Christianity or Catholicism or Islam, Judaism and Buddhism is slightly different from everyone else's.
If that's not the case, then why do Sunni's fight Shiites to the death? Why do people switch back and forth between Catholicism and Anglicanism? Why do some Jews belong to Reform congregations and others to ultra-Orthodox synagogues? The reasons are because people have different needs at different points in their lifetimes and many change their minds about one orthodoxy or another.
Church leadership changes, too, and different church leaders have vastly different interpretations of God's intentions and laws. Consider, for example, the difference between Pope John XXIII and his Vatican II and the much more conservative views of the current pope.
But Dean takes a decidedly different view. I bow to her expertise as a minister and to Princeton Theological Seminary, but a lifetime of experience has proven to me that there is no one view of any theology. Even congregations argue about religious questions. Dean believes there is only one view, and that many American Christian teens are violating Christian orthodoxy.
She spent a summer interviewing thousands of teenage Christians and told CNN the following about her findings: She says teens have adopted a "watered-down faith that portrays God as a divine therapist whose chief goal is to boost people's self-esteem.
She believes that parents and pastors are "unwittingly" passing along a self-serving strain of Christianity and that this "imposter" faith is one reason teenagers abandon the churches. She complains the reason teens are leaving is that churches fail to give them enough to be passionate about.
But my question to her is, what is faith if not a belief system that holds one together emotionally through life, that answers unanswerable questions and lays down rules separating right from wrong? It also provides a support network of like-minded people and families.
She says that just believing is not enough: parents and pastors should instill passion in young Christians and these four traits: Each Christian teen should have a personal story about God they can share, a deep connection to a faith community, a sense of purpose and hope for the future.
Actually, effective psychotherapy can instill the latter three of those four traits (including a deep connection to a community of like-minded people, if not a "faith" community) and a lot more.
Successful therapy endows patients with a much deeper understanding of their natures. It instills the ability to think rationally about real problems and come up with specific solutions, rather than just trusting in God to do so. And I'm not exactly sure if there's any value to her first trait, unless her main goal is proselytizing.
What she describes as a failing on the part of parents and pastors is really just a part of generational change. Generations of Americans go back and forth on religion.
My generation was decidedly less religious than that of my parents. Intervening generations have found faith again. Perhaps this generation of teenagers will pull away from religion for good.
Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippnews.com). E-mail bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com.