{"id":6691,"date":"2010-08-27T05:47:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-27T05:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2010\/08\/almost-christian-3.html"},"modified":"2010-08-27T05:47:08","modified_gmt":"2010-08-27T05:47:08","slug":"almost-christian-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/08\/almost-christian-3.html","title":{"rendered":"Almost Christian 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"KendaDean.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>The youth in the church reflect a Christianity of niceness<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
Kenda Dean’s new book is called Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church<\/a>\"\"
\n<\/strong><\/em>, and it is a hard-hitting critique of the American church (and therefore of parents) for the condition of the faith of its youth. Kenda Dean’s got some very quotable lines.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Her 2d chp is about the triumph of the “cult of nice.” American youth are devoted to nonjudgmental openness, self-determination, and the authority of personal experience.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Religion, she argues, has always polarized and identified people in particularities, but moralistic therapeutic deism’s new version permits the youth to use religion to homogenize instead of polarize.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Christianity is about a particular God and a particular Lord and a particular kind of behavior. It is “radical particularity”: made possible only by taking part in God’s particularity and openness through Jesus Christ.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Her complaint?<\/div>\n


\nThe Church has handed on MTD to its youth because MTD is the vision it is itself living.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
Jesus demands not niceness but holiness, a life conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. And the Apostles’ Creed is a dramatic sweeping description of God’s wildest dreams but MTD is like reciting the Declaration of Independence in a Sunday School class. Happiness is not the point.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
“MTD is what is left once Christianity has been drained of its missional impulse, once holiness has given way to acculturation, and once cautious self-preservation has supplanted the divine abandon of self-giving love” (39-40).<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Hard-hitting indeed.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The youth in the church reflect a Christianity of niceness Kenda Dean’s new book is called Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church , and it is a hard-hitting critique of the American church (and therefore of parents) for the condition of the faith of its youth. Kenda Dean’s got…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel"],"yoast_head":"\nAlmost Christian 3 - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2010\/08\/almost-christian-3.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Almost Christian 3 - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The youth in the church reflect a Christianity of niceness Kenda Dean’s new book is called Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church , and it is a hard-hitting critique of the American church (and therefore of parents) for the condition of the faith of its youth. 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