Smith describes the "Creed" of Moral Therapeutic Deism (or Relational Deity) as
(1) A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
(2) God wants people to be good, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
(3) The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
(4) God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
(5) Good people go to heaven when they die. (p. 165)

In and of itself, except for the oversimplification of #2 and the blatant falisity of #4, there is nothing untruthful about the rest of this "Creed". It describes well some profoundly Christian convictions. Yet this is why it is perhaps so insidious, for it overwhelms the baptismal Creed of the Church: The Apostles Creed:

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried.
He descended into hell.
The third day He arose again from the dead.
He ascended into heaven
and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,
whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.

One can move from the Apostle's Creed to affirmations in the Creed of MTD by a certain process of disembodiment and abstraction, the particularistic rearticulation that comes from re-placing the church with the nation-state. In seeing this, Smith's additional comments make sense:

"The elements of its [MTD] creed are normally assimilated by degrees, in parts, admixed with elements of more traditional religious faiths. Indeed, the religious creed appears to operate as a parasitic faith. It cannot sustain its own integral, independent life; rather it must attach itself like an incubus to established historical religious traditions, feeding on their doctrines and sensibilities, and expanding by mutating their theological substance to resemble its own distinctive image. . . . This religion generally does not and cannot stand on its own, so its adherents must be Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, Jewish Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, Mormon Moralistic Therapeutic Deists, and even nonreligious Moralistic Therapeutic Deists. . . . Believers in each larger tradition practice their own versions of this otherwise common parasitic religion. The Jewish version, for instance, may emphasize the ethical living aspect of the creed, while the Methodist version stresses the getting-to-heaven part. Each of the believers then can think of themselves as belonging to the specific religious tradition they name as their own – Catholic, Baptist, Jewish, Mormon, whatever – while simultaneously sharing the cross-cutting, core beliefs of their de facto common Moralistic Therapeutic Deist faith. In effect, these believers get to enjoy whatever particulars of their own faith heritages that appeal to them, while also reaping the benefits of this shared, harmonizing, interfaith religion" (p. 166).

What Smith doesn't adequately emphasize is that this "faith" is every bit as much as particular and exclusive as other traditions -- it just masks its particularity by a language of "tolerance" -- and we all know that tolerance cannot tolerate the intolerance.

It is the majority discourse within this society, even as it has colonialized the life of the church, whether it be mainline or evangelical Protestant, or Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Academic theologians have given sophisticated and profound intellectual formulations to support it. It is tempting to see the Tillich versus Barth or the Rahner versus Balthasar tensions of 20th century theology in light of the defense of MTD versus ecclesial resistance to MTD.

Yet the real place for the issue is within the parish or local congregation. Pastors face incredible pressure, social and financial, to extract the Creed of MTD from the Apostle's Creed, or merely to interpret the Apostle's Creed in light of MTD (or just abandon the Apostle's Creed and baptism). In good intentioned response to the struggles of those around, the pastor/priest intuitively responds to the "needs of the parishioners" -- and often rightfully so -- from within the truthfulness of the parody. Yet in the process, the life of the church so easily becomes colonized and distorted, the home of a parasite rather than the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps this is the challenge for us today: how not to be defined by the parody even while we resist it; how to embrace the truthfulness of what the parody emphasizes while not letting it colonize the life of the church. This calls for great wisdom, far exceeding mine. It seems to me that God has given the church (ie., local congregations, parishes that are at once local and catholic) three distinct, simple practices that might help us live faithfully: (1) Reading the Scriptures in worship and the faithful proclamation of the Word; (2) The Sacraments, especially baptism and the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist; and (3) the Works of Mercy. While in isolation from each other, each one may be coopted into MTD and thus the service of the liberal nation-state. Yet when a congregation/parish remains committed to enfolding all three as witness to the Triune God, it seems to me that they become a profound means of grace to sustain the faithful life of the church, even amidst the tremendous power of the institutions of this society to coopt and colonialize the life of the church.