Word.ws English Dictionary

moralistic therapeutic deism

moralistic therapeutic deism noun: a diffuse and nonspecific conception of theism and morality, not necessarily anchored in any established religious doctrine, identified as prevalent among American adolescents in the early twenty-first century.

Noun (1)

moralistic therapeutic deism (uncountable)

  1. A diffuse and nonspecific conception of theism and morality, not necessarily anchored in any established religious doctrine, identified as prevalent among American adolescents in the early twenty-first century.
    • 'Moralistic Therapeutic Deism' indicates the young people's view is that religion is 'good for you' in so far as it provides people with a moral framework (Sara Savage, Sylvia Collins-Mayo, Making sense of Generation Y: the world view of 15- to 25-year-olds, 2006, p. 50)
    Synonyms:
    MTD

Noun (2) capitalized: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (uncountable)

  1. Alternative letter-case form of moralistic therapeutic deism.

Synonyms of moralistic therapeutic deism

Forms of moralistic therapeutic deism

alternative formMoralistic Therapeutic Deism

Origin of moralistic therapeutic deism

First use appears c. 2005. Coined by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton in Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.

Questions about moralistic therapeutic deism

What does moralistic therapeutic deism mean?
Moralistic therapeutic deism means a diffuse and nonspecific conception of theism and morality, not necessarily anchored in any established religious doctrine, identified as prevalent among American adolescents in the early twenty-first century.
What part of speech is moralistic therapeutic deism?
Moralistic therapeutic deism is a noun.

Words near moralistic therapeutic deism in the dictionary

  1. moralisings
  2. moralism
  3. moralisms
  4. moralist
  5. moralistic
  6. moralistic therapeutic deism
  7. moralistically
  8. moralistics
  9. moralists
  10. moralities
  11. morality

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: moralistic therapeutic deism (page history and authors); Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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