The prevailing attitude of the students studied was that of a profound individualism. The assumption is that the autonomous, self-directed individual is the norm and the goal. Religion, therefore, is something that you consume based on your own needs and wants. This is an instrumental view of religion and religious experience. It is a tool, one of many tools that may or may not get you where you, the automous individual, want to go. This, again, puts the individual at the center of all choice. Religion is not viewed as an external, transcendent reality that makes compelling claims or demands on peoples lives--especially demands to change in ways that seem unpalatable.
The primary ends of religion as teenagers understand it is this close but ambivalent relationship to morality--religion is seen as fostering morality but not necessary for it. The bar on morality is pretty low: "be nice" sums up the extent of it quite well.
As the business world has cast most all of us primarily in the role of 'consumers,' it was only a matter of time before this became the dominant paradigm for understanding all of our lives. Christian Smith contends that teens are not 'leading sociological indicators' of the future. Rather, they are barometers of our society at-large. Teenagers reflect back to the adult world the issues already present in our culture.
And when it comes to religion, teens are simply parroting back the mantra that until now has strictly been reserved for life in the marketplace: the customer is always right.
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