Christian Smith, Professor of Sociology at Notre Dame
University, co-authored a book with Melinda Lundquist Denton in 2005 titled, Soul
Searching: The Religious and Spiritual
Lives of American Teenagers. They
suggested that the “de facto” dominant religion among contemporary teenagers in
the United States was what one might call “Moralistic
Therapeutic Deism.” They proposed
that the creed of that religion,
