Sociologist Christian Smith has observed that the religious lives of most American teens express what he calls “moralistic therapeutic Deism.” Even many church-going, professing Christians seem incapable of explaining their faith in terms that go beyond an upbeat greeting- card faith. But many critics who lament this sad state of affairs nonetheless assume a minimal religiosity when they enumerate the public consequences of faith. In public, we all have to be Deists. Relying on St. Paul’s sermon in Acts 17, Ken Myers will argue that we can and should be more thoroughly Christian in our public presence, and describe how education can prepare our children for faithful public witness in a deliberately post-Christian society.
Ken Myers
As host of the Mars Hill Audio Journal since 1992, Ken Myers has interviewed hundreds of authors of books that contribute to understanding the challenges faced by Christians in modernity. A frequent speaker at classical Christian schools (and at SCL conferences), Myers has applied the wisdom from those interviews to the challenge of enculturating the next generation of believers. A graduate of the University of Maryland (BA in Communications) and Westminster Theological Seminary (MAR in theological studies), Myers’s early career as an arts and humanities editor at National Public Radio stimulated his lifelong interest in discovering how contemporary culture took the form it now has, and how the consequences of the Gospel require Christians to embody countercultural alternatives.