Jackson Arnett sits down with Mark and Rex as the first Jessup student guest to discuss Moral Therapuetic Deism. MTD was coined by researchers studying the spiritual life of the average American teenager to summarize their majority belief that God exists but is not necessarily involved in day to day life. Goodness is the goal. The trio see if this research has stood the test of the last decade with some surprising ans insightful results.

TRANSCRIPT

0:08

Hey, welcome to Jessup think and I'm your host Mark Moore. Joined by my esteemed co hosts Really? Yeah Julius don't go Julius. Okay. Rex Gurney. Okay, the third Julius. I have to I just can't and and excited to be with Rex but also to to welcome our very first student guest Jackson Erna, welcome to the show. Thank you. And this is your last semester. Yes. So Lord willing, yeah, light is at the end of the tunnel. If we speak it into your life, yes. Speak. Yes, this is your last semester. Although we will we will still take your money if it's kind of a catch. 22 like we're not that sad one of those if they have to see you again. But we

0:53

will actually always taking money because you're gonna get the Yes, right.

0:57

Yes. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So you can't escape. You can't escape. It's gonna keep coming.

1:03

But we've both had you in class before and, and then Rex, you may not know this, I wanted to kind of throw this out. You know, Jackson, I have done a couple speaking gigs together. That's true. And, and from that has kind of spurned maybe a side project, you know, it's a side, maybe a side podcasts, you know, coming out in about 2029. Maybe, but we're gonna it's gonna be kind of like a coming of age Podcast, where we talk about really just kind of intense stories of middle school. So let The Wonder Years. Yes, exactly. Okay. And we're gonna call it awkward transitions. Okay, so it's gonna, it's gonna be perfect. We've already trademarked it. We're already practicing for that today. Yes, we are. Yes, we are. And that's the other part of the packet is we're only going to use one microphone, so we're gonna have to so it's just gonna be built right in. It's just gonna be awkward transitions are already there. Yeah, it's just a currently Yes. And, and that's kind of middle school, that it is just so well. Awkward. And, and it doesn't get maybe less awkward into high school. But, or even adulthood. Maybe you

2:14

just learn to cope with what makes awkward transitions universally relevant. Yes, that's

2:19

true. It's just there. That is part of our byline. Yeah, right now we're writing it. We're creating a podcast on a podcast. Wow. Yeah, it's inception podcast happening. But we Bri on the show. We want to talk about a topic that I love the title of the topic. But it does actually connect with middle school and high school students in their maybe beliefs about God and in general. And that topic is called moralistic therapeutic deism. And the listener may have just done a double take and their phone or their car radio. Do you know what a radio is? Jackson? I'm familiar. Okay. Music, museums, cars. You used to have radios. You weren't even allowed to choose what was on them. Like you could choose a station just happened this video station, they say also, that's true. That's true. But yeah, so you may have you may have taken a doubletake and say, Wait moralistic therapeutic deism, I think maybe I understand all of those words separately. But what? What do those words mean together? So Rex, why don't you give us a good definition of Sure.

3:30

Sure. Um, this actually comes from a study that was done in 2005, about the religious views of just sort of teenagers in America, I assume some of them like youth grouped, and some writing just from the general population. But the findings of that were really interesting and they kind of go here around five sort of core beliefs that these these youth have about have about God. And whether fo