(Blog) Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: I Think We're in Trouble - Part 4 - Ep. 984 - September 28, 2026

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: Faith Without the Cross

A church can keep talking about Jesus while leaving out the call to be born again. If your church emphasizes happiness and good behavior but rarely mentions the cross, you're hearing the concern at the center of Alan Smith and Jeff Rowland's discussion.

In Episode 984 of The Smith and Rowland Show, recorded September 28, 2026, the hosts continue their examination of moralistic therapeutic deism and its influence on church life. Their concern begins with what churches lose when they abandon biblical foundations in pursuit of something new.

Why the hosts say some churches have lost their center

The episode opens with familiar banter, including a joke about a sleep-aid conference whose sleeping attendees couldn't object to sponsoring the show. But the conversation soon returns to the serious question running through this series: why does so much church life no longer look like the church?

Smith and Rowland don't apply that criticism to every congregation. They're concerned about churches that have lost their emphasis on the supernatural, born-again experience that makes someone a Christian.

Rowland connects that loss to declining evangelistic fervor. When a church stops sharing the gospel, it also stops passing its faith to others.

He describes another concern he's been preaching about: abandoning the "old paths" simply because they're old. In his account, churches haven't always rejected established teachings and practices because they were wrong or ineffective. They've rejected them because people wanted a new teacher, a new teaching, or a different style and culture.

The hosts see moralistic therapeutic deism as one belief system that has filled the space left behind.

What moralistic therapeutic deism means

Good behavior, personal happiness, and a distant God

Smith explains moralistic therapeutic deism, often shortened to MTD, through its three parts:

• Moralistic faith emphasizes behaving well, although people may disagree about what counts as moral behavior.
• Therapeutic faith asks how Christianity can make someone happy or help them feel better.
• Deism treats God as distant and largely uninvolved in everyday affairs, but available when someone needs help.

Together, these ideas describe a faith organized around doing good and feeling good, with little expectation that God will direct a person's daily life.

The teenagers behind the discussion

The hosts connect the term to the 2005 research of sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. That research examined the beliefs of American teenagers, including young people with backgrounds in church attendance, Bible camps, and youth groups.

The concern was that some teenagers had learned a belief system closer to MTD than to the Christian gospel.

Smith and Rowland also emphasize the passage of time. Those teenagers are adults in 2026, and the hosts argue that the assumptions they learned can now shape church leadership. For them, this raises a question about what one generation of Christians is actually handing to the next.

A gospel that leaves out being born again

The hosts make an important distinction: churches don't have to announce that they've rejected Jesus to stop preaching the gospel.

Instead, they can stop talking about the blood of Christ, the cross, and a personal encounter with salvation. They can retain Christian language while leaving out the need for new birth.

Rowland describes the resulting message as a "born-againless" gospel. Against that, both hosts return to Jesus' words:

"Ye must be born again."

Their criticism concerns a message that reduces Christianity to good conduct and positive feelings. In that message, people can hear that they should improve their behavior without hearing why they need Jesus Christ.

For Smith and Rowland, new birth belongs at the center of Christian faith. A church that leaves it out hasn't merely changed its presentation. It has removed something Jesus said was necessary.

Why the gospel has to keep reproducing

Truth as seed

Smith compares the gospel to seed. Fruit from a living vine contains seed that can produce more of its kind. In the same way, he argues, truth spoken into another person's life should produce spiritual fruit.

The hosts use that image to explain their concern about churches that aren't reproducing. They see declining evangelism as evidence that Christians have stopped planting the gospel in other people's lives.

That concern also challenges the idea that only specially gifted believers should share Christ. Rowland describes Christians who excuse themselves from evangelism because they don't believe they have that gift. As a result, they keep their faith private and leave the work to someone else.

Rejoicing without going again

Rowland recalls hearing Jack Hyles preach from the passage in Psalm 126 about going out with precious seed and returning with rejoicing.

The sequence is simple: go, sow, reap, and rejoice. But the work doesn't end with rejoicing.

As Rowland recounts the point, the church went out, sowed the gospel, and celebrated people coming to Christ. Then it enjoyed the celebration so much that it forgot to go again.

The problem, in that illustration, is a church living on the memory of a harvest while neglecting the sowing that produces another one.

Spiritual blindness and silence about truth

Rowland also connects the failure to speak truth with spiritual oppression.

He refers to the account of Jesus healing a demon-possessed man who was blind and unable to speak. After Jesus healed him, the man could see and speak.

Rowland draws a spiritual application from that account: demonic deception can blind people to truth and silence their witness. If they can no longer recognize or speak truth, they can't pass it on.

This is part of the hosts' broader argument that the church's condition involves more than methods or attendance. They see a spiritual problem beneath the loss of biblical conviction and evangelistic urgency.

The biblical worldview figures discussed in the episode

The hosts read survey figures while considering how widely MTD-like beliefs have spread. They discuss the following findings as reported in the writing they're examining.

Smith and Rowland regard these figures as alarming because they concern people who identify as Christians, including church leaders.

They contrast the beliefs about multiple ways to God with John 14:6, where Jesus says:

"I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."

Rowland also connects the discussion to his earlier teaching about what he called three great delusions: apostate Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. His argument rests on the conviction that Christian teaching must agree with Jesus' words about access to the Father.

The hosts' central concern is the distance between a Christian identity and beliefs grounded in Scripture.

Why evangelism may need to begin inside church walls

Smith interprets the reported 65% figure as evidence that many self-identified Christians don't read or know the Word of God. In his view, someone who understands Scripture couldn't affirm those beliefs with a clear conscience.

Rowland then considers the leadership figures. If only 37% of senior pastors have a biblical worldview, the remaining 63% may be unable to teach that worldview to their congregations.

The hosts distinguish between people under the broad umbrella of Christendom and people who believe the Bible and have experienced new birth. Because those categories aren't identical, they argue that churches themselves are a major field for evangelism.

Rowland calls the inside of American churches one of the greatest opportunities for evangelistic work. He argues that the church must confront its own condition before it can address the wider problem.

His response to the pastoral figures is deliberately forceful. He says pastors without a biblical worldview should find another job. He goes as far as saying he'd support closing 63% of American churches and planting new ones rather than continuing church life without a biblical foundation.

That statement expresses the urgency of his concern. He isn't trying to reassure leaders that their current course is acceptable.

Deconstruction and the faith young people were taught

Leaving MTD rather than historic Christianity

The discussion turns to Kenda Creasy Dean's 2010 book, Almost Christian, which takes up Christian Smith's findings.

The hosts describe an interpretation of some young people's departure from church: they may be rejecting the faith their churches taught them, a faith closer to MTD than to historic Christianity.

They connect that concern to deconstruction, while acknowledging that it doesn't explain every person's departure. Their focus is on what happens when churches teach a thin version of Christianity and young people later discover that it doesn't sustain their faith.

Inviting people into a house being torn apart

Smith illustrates his concern with a dinner invitation. If someone invites guests to eat while a crew tears the house apart, the setting hardly welcomes them.

He applies that picture to Christian doctrine. A church can't keep dismantling the faith and expect people to feel invited into something stable.

Rowland adds that devaluing biblical doctrines teaches the next generation to doubt Scripture. When leaders remove elements of the faith, young people inherit uncertainty about the very book those leaders claim to believe.

A Christian life should support Christian teaching

The hosts also address the gap between what Christians say and how they live.

Young people can hear adults profess belief in the Bible while watching conduct that contradicts it. Rowland argues that this inconsistency contributes to doubt, especially when people place their trust in other people rather than in God's Word.

He returns to an old preaching saying: "Sometimes you're the only Bible people ever read."

His point is that Christ manifests himself through the lives of his children. That means Christian conduct should agree with Christian teaching.

Rowland describes a life marked by repentance, grace, and forgiveness. Believers receive grace and forgiveness, but they also extend them to others. Those practices support the message they preach.

By contrast, people can use religion to justify their behavior so they'll feel better about themselves. If they then assume God will accept whatever they choose, the hosts see all three parts of MTD at work: a self-defined morality, emotional reassurance, and a God who makes few demands.

When church life becomes business and performance

Rowland says he intends his criticism to make people uncomfortable because of the church's lack of repentance.

He argues that churches have too often turned ministry into corporate life, a business affair, or entertainment. They can also become preoccupied with performance while preaching against performance.

His concern is the shift toward how well a message is presented rather than what that message contains.

Smith ties that criticism directly to the cross:

"If you center your faith on comfort and not the cross, you have definitely missed the message."

The hosts also discuss people who leave churches because they feel uncomfortable, then describe the problem by saying they're "not being fed" or their needs aren't being met. They suggest that, in some cases, those complaints reveal an expectation that church should maintain personal comfort.

They don't dismiss joy or fulfillment. Their objection is to making comfort the standard by which Christian teaching is accepted or rejected.

Following Jesus when faith becomes costly

The contrast with Christians in North Korea

The writing discussed in the episode uses Christians in North Korea as a stark contrast to comfort-centered faith. It describes believers facing arrest, imprisonment, labor camps, and punishment of family members.

Smith and Rowland argue that a distant God who mainly wants people to feel happy offers little explanation for enduring that kind of cost.

The faith they hold up instead rests on the conviction that Jesus is the risen Lord and worth following at any cost. That conviction can sustain obedience when following Christ brings suffering rather than ease.

Smith adds that believers may need that kind of faith in the future.

Hardship and becoming like Christ

The hosts connect this point to the familiar complaint that God shouldn't allow a believer to suffer.

Rowland challenges the assumption that Christians should be exempt from hardship. If suffering is something people must face, he asks why a believer should assume it can't happen to them.

Smith states that Christianity concerns conformity to the image of Christ. Coming to Jesus doesn't guarantee a comfortable life.

They affirm that Christians can experience happiness, fulfillment, and great joy. But those experiences don't remove the call to follow Christ when obedience becomes difficult.

National division and the loss of a shared goal

Rowland then returns to the account of Jesus healing the demon-possessed man. When the Pharisees accused Jesus of acting through the devil's power, Jesus answered that Satan wouldn't cast out Satan. He also said that every kingdom divided against itself couldn't stand.

Rowland applies that principle to the United States.

He argues that Americans once disagreed about how to proceed while sharing a goal: what was best for the country. He connects that shared goal to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In his assessment, those goals have come under attack. He calls legal abortion an attack on life, and Smith adds that aborted children lose every opportunity to exercise liberty.

Rowland also voices concern about restrictions on freedom and political movements that, he says, want to seize private property and put it under government control. He argues that people increasingly face demands about what they may pursue and how happiness should be defined.

For him, these conflicts raise the question of how long a nation can stand when it no longer shares a common goal.

What a fourth-generation farm teaches about foundations

Smith answers the discussion of national division with a distinction between building and tearing down.

He uses his family farm as the main example. He's a fourth-generation farmer, and his son is the fifth generation. What Smith enjoys today required the work of the three generations before him, along with his own.

His son therefore needs to appreciate those earlier generations, honor them, and understand how they built the farm. Without that understanding, Smith argues, he won't be able to maintain what he inherits, much less add to it.

The same principle applies to the church. Rowland points to the biblical image of building on the foundation of the apostles and prophets.

The hosts' argument is that rejecting everything that came before leaves the next generation with less to build on. Progress requires an understanding of the foundation, not an assumption that everything old should disappear.

Why tearing down costs more than the immediate loss

Smith uses several examples to explain why destruction can put people farther behind than they realize.

In his construction illustration, tearing down an existing structure means rebuilding what was removed before any additional height becomes possible. The desired improvement now requires more work because the starting point is lower.

His basketball example makes the same point with a four-point swing. A team with the ball has an opportunity to score two points. If it loses possession and the opponent scores instead, its position is four points worse than the one it could have reached.

He also contrasts investing a dollar that grows to $1.20 with spending that dollar on a Coke. The spending decision gives up the opportunity for that money to produce a return.

These examples support his broader point: something built over a lifetime can be torn down in days or weeks. Yet another lifetime may not be enough to rebuild it.

Rowland connects that principle to sowing and reaping. What people sow can produce much more than the original seed. Therefore, the long-term effects of preserving or destroying a foundation reach beyond the immediate action.

The church's condition and the nation's condition

Smith and Rowland return to a statement they've made before: as the church goes, so goes the nation.

They view the visible condition of national life as a reflection of a larger spiritual condition. Division, deconstruction, and the loss of foundations in society mirror problems they see within churches.

That connection brings the conversation back to MTD. A faith built around a distant God and personal happiness asks little when obedience becomes costly. It also provides little foundation for the work of passing a living faith to another generation.

For the hosts, the church's task includes speaking truth, living in agreement with that truth, and continuing to sow the gospel. Those responsibilities can't survive if comfort becomes the governing goal.

The cross remains the center of Christian faith

Smith and Rowland's strongest concern is that churches can retain Christian language while losing the message that gives it meaning. Good behavior and positive feelings can't replace new birth, repentance, and faith in Jesus Christ.

A church passes on a living faith through the gospel it speaks and the life its people demonstrate. When comfort governs both, the cross can disappear without anyone announcing that it has been removed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAEKp7uLyH4