Death, Michael Jackson, and Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

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I, like many other red-blooded humans, watched a good portion of Michael Jackson’s memorial service.  I have no special affinity for Michael Jackson, but I figured that a cultural event of this magnitude was worth paying at least a little bit of attention to.

I’ll admit that there was much about watching the memorial service that was strange.  I have been fortunate enough in my young life to have very limited experience with death.  In fact, though I’m a pretty emotional person, I don’t know that I have ever cried at a funeral.  I say that not to be callous, but rather to say that the funerals I have attended have been either for a) people I did not have a strong bond with, or b) people who were very old and who passed peacefully. As mentioned, I obviously didn’t have a relationship with the King of Pop, nor did I follow his career very closely, thus while I hurt deeply for those who expressed genuine grief in their speeches, I myself was emotionally unmoved.

What I found most strange about the memorial, however, was the role that religious expression played in both the ceremony and the comments of those watching on-line at cnn.com as I was. References to God were found throughout the ceremony, despite the fact that the family had been unable to decide which faith tradition would guide the service. Furthermore, on the Facebook feed that served as a sidebar to the actual webcast, there were innumerable references to Jackson “being in a better place”, “being in heaven”, “being with God”, and there were repeated other references to God, God’s goodness, Jesus, and heaven.  Stevie Wonder most overtly speculated about Jackson’s posthumous whereabouts as he started to play the piano, saying,

“This is a moment that I wished that I didn’t live to see come. But as much that I can say that and mean it, I do know that God is good. And I do know that as much as we may feel—and we do—that we need Michael here with us, God must have needed him far more.”

Comments like that were echoed by emotional Facebookers, whose comments seemed to indicate that they were both grieved at Jackson’s death, and confident that he was now in heaven.

I found all of this religiosity quite striking, especially given the fact that no one is really sure what Jackson’s personal religious beliefs were. While many religious groups claim some measure of connection to Jackson, there is little public evidence to suggest that spirituality was a particularly important aspect of his life. Furthermore, perhaps I am being cynical (maybe even judgmental), but I at least wonder about the sincerity of the spirituality of the many who posted God-laced comments on the Facebook newsfeed during the funeral.  I, of course, am in no place to make final judgments about those people, and I am certainly not meaning to speculate on MJ’s eternal destination. At the end of the day, most all of us are left simply to wonder about Michael’s spirituality and any sort of pre-death connection to Jesus that may have existed.

As I watched the funeral, listened to speeches, and read comments from strangers, I was first reminded of the effect that death has on our spirituality. The most ardent of atheists will have those at his or her funeral that sincerely believe they are in “a better place”. I was then reminded of the subtle yet dominant belief system in America which allows us to make those sorts of statements.  The belief system is the closest thing to a civil religion that exists in America, and it is called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. The term Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD from here on out) was first coined by Christian Smith, who is currently a professor of Sociology at Notre Dame University. In his book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Life of America’s Teenagers, Smith argued that MTD most accurately described the spirituality of teenagers in America. From his website:

“The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American teenagers, the actual professed religion of most young adults, whether they’re being raised in Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Presbyterian, or Jewish homes, is what he called Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. What this means is that although many teens believe in God and go to church regularly, they end up defining belief in very vague and subjective terms, such as, God exists, He’s there when we need him, He wants us to be happy, The purpose of life is to feel good, Good people go to heaven, and so forth.”

I agree with Smith, that this accurately describes the spiritual beliefs of many “religious” or even “Christian” teenagers, but I would also suggest (as others have) that the spiritual beliefs of many adults in America are not much different.

Another article on the subject I read stated that, in general, MTDs believe the following:

• God exists and has created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

• God wants people to be good and nice to each other and to be moral, as taught in the Bible and most world religions.

• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

• God does not need to be particularly involved in life except when needed for a problem.

• Good people will go to heaven when they die.

Obviously, some of these beliefs are good (I think God favors us being nice to each other…I remember reading something about loving your neighbor), and others are highly problematic (if only good people go to heaven when they die, we’re all screwed). MTD is convenient in that it denies the reality of sin, it does not require any sort of atonement, there is no obejective standard by which any one is measured, there are no absolutes (only perspectives), it is universalistic soteriologically (everyone goes to heaven, because everyone, in the eyes of those who love them, is good) and the whole thing is so vague that there is no concept of accountability, morality, spiritual growth, etc.  It is the dangerous offspring of postmodernism (not that postmodernism is necessarily bad) and it appears also to be an over-corrective to fundamentalism. It also reflects our societal tendency to base our spiritual beliefs on what “seems right to us” rather than on any higher authority or any sense of historicity, but that is another post for another day.

Many of the comments I heard in both the broadcast and the Facebook comments during the MJ memorial, reflected MTD: Of course there was much talk of heaven, there was talk of how MJ was a good person, and there was grief-inspired crying out to God. In reflecting MTD these comments reflected how spiritually lost we are as a society.  Death seems to reveal the extent of our lostness.  I have seen this even in my own family.  I remember when my grandfather (a Romcan Catholic) passed away, my mother asked me to suggest a Bible passage to be read at his funeral.  I asked her if she had anything in mind, and my mother, who has attended church faithfully for almost her entire life replied, “Something that will make him go to heaven.” I thought about reading her Hebrews 9:27 or Ephesians 2:8-9 and explaining that his salvation had already been determined, but I thought better of it. The notion that the Bible passage that is read at a person’s funeral would affect his or her salvation can, um, creatively fit in MTD, but it certainly doesn’t fit in Biblical Christianity.

The implications of the prevalence of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism are of course great, and I won’t get into them in much great depth here.  At the risk of being pigeon-holed by those who don’t know me personally, I will say that MTD should be of grave concern for Christians because it inoculates people to the gospel of Jesus Christ, in that it tricks people into believing they are Christians when in fact they are not.  It turns spirituality into a sort of self-help program, all the while denying sin, redemption, judgment, hell, and the good news of God’s free gift of grace, while providing a sense of false spiritual comfort in one’s ”lostness”.

As it was in the case of Michael Jackson, death is often unexpected and tragic.  It often stirs us spirituality and heightens our awareness of the reality that what is seen is not all that exists.  My hope and prayer would be that we as a people would be inclined not to be content with MTD, nor to run to some sort of dry, dusty, judgmental and lifeless religion, but instead to cling to the cross of Christ, and remember that it is the cross, not our fuzzy feelings about God nor our supposed good works, that gives us true hope for heaven.

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