Increasingly, the fuel behind mainline social justice is no longer the gospel of Jesus Christ, but something far thinner, far less transformative. It’s what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Denton have labeled Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (Smith & Denton, 2005).
By Dr. Tim Orr
It’s no secret that many mainline Protestant churches today are deeply invested in social justice causes. Walk into a typical PCUSA, ELCA, UCC, or ECUSA congregation, and you’ll likely see banners proclaiming support for racial reconciliation, climate change activism, LGBTQ+ inclusion, or immigration reform. To be clear, much of this seems initially commendable.
Christians are called to love their neighbors, protect the vulnerable, and stand for what is just (Micah 6:8; Isaiah 1:17). But while the issues addressed are often legitimate, the theological framework underlying these efforts has, in many places, subtly shifted. Increasingly, the fuel behind mainline social justice is no longer the gospel of Jesus Christ, but something far thinner, far less transformative. It’s what sociologists Christian Smith and Melinda Denton have labeled Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (Smith & Denton, 2005). It looks Christian from a distance. It uses Christian vocabulary. But at its heart, it represents a fundamental drift away from historic biblical faith.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) is a worldview that initially sounds unobjectionable—even uplifting. It asserts that God wants us to be good, nice, and fair to each other. It frames religion as a tool to help people feel good about themselves and live happy, fulfilling lives. It teaches that God exists but generally stays in the background of everyday affairs unless called upon in a crisis. In other words, MTD reduces Christianity to human niceness, emotional well-being, and a distant deity who operates more like a divine emergency contact—a helper when needed—rather than the actively sovereign Lord of heaven and earth.
This shift in theological imagination profoundly affects how many churches today understand and pursue social justice. Under a biblical framework, social justice flows from the character of God: His righteousness, His mercy, and His passion for redeeming a broken world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Justice is part of the kingdom God brings—a kingdom that demands repentance, offers forgiveness, and transforms hearts and societies alike (Isaiah 11:1–9; Luke 4:18–19). In contrast, under MTD, social justice becomes detached from divine revelation and reduced to a set of therapeutic goals: affirmation, inclusion, and personal or collective well-being. Justice is no longer about God's glory; it’s about human flourishing as defined by the ever-shifting standards of contemporary culture—a redefinition that reflects the broader cultural embrace of expressive individualism and the prioritization of personal autonomy over divine authority.
Over time, this redefinition has dramatically changed the nature of what many churches call "justice." Earlier movements, like the Social Gospel, while flawed in certain respects, still sought to anchor justice efforts in a theological framework centered on God's moral authority. This grounding has increasingly been lost in more recent decades. In the early to mid-20th century, even as liberal theology rose in some circles, mainline Protestant social action was still often framed in Christian terms of moral accountability before God. For example, leaders in the Social Gospel movement sought to address poverty, labor exploitation, and urban injustice with the explicit belief that Jesus' kingdom demanded both personal and societal renewal (Rauschenbusch, 1917). Although flawed in some ways, the Social Gospel movement still operated with the assumption that God’s moral authority was binding on society. While horizontal in application, justice still looked upward to a transcendent divine standard.
However, in recent decades—especially from the 1960s onward—the cultural soil in which churches minister shifted dramatically. The rise of expressive individualism, the sexual revolution, and a growing distrust of institutional authority redefined what "justice" meant in public consciousness. Increasingly, justice was not about aligning human society with God's order but about affirming individual autonomy, dismantling traditional norms, and maximizing personal happiness (Bellah et al., 1985). Many mainline churches, seeking to remain relevant and compassionate, unconsciously adopted these cultural priorities. In this new framework, calling someone to repent could be seen as harmful. To maintain biblical sexual ethics could be labeled as unjust. To proclaim Christ as the exclusive way to salvation could be viewed as oppressive. Thus, justice itself was reimagined—not as fidelity to God’s righteous standard but as removing all barriers to individual self-expression, subtly redefining not only morality but the very mission of the church itself.
Today, in many mainline Protestant circles, social justice is often almost entirely detached from biblical categories like sin, repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. Justice is equated with inclusion; righteousness is reduced to personal authenticity; the church's mission is recast, not as announcing the lordship of Christ, but as championing the marginalized according to shifting social definitions. The result is a vision of justice that is both powerful and powerless—powerful in stirring emotions and mobilizing activism, but powerless to heal the deepest wounds of the human heart, which require the transforming grace of Jesus Christ (Romans 3:21–26).
This evolution matters deeply because it reveals that what we believe about God inevitably shapes what we believe about justice. If God is merely a distant helper, justice will become little more than self-help therapy projected onto societal problems. If God is the holy King who is making all things new, justice will be a call to submit to His reign—a reign characterized by grace, mercy, and truth. Without a robust theological foundation, social justice becomes reactive rather than redemptive, fragmented rather than holistic, therapeutic rather than truly transformative in its reach and endurance.
In short, MTD has subtly hollowed out the church’s understanding of justice over time. It has traded a kingdom-shaped vision of flourishing for a therapeutic vision of comfort. It has turned righteousness into affirmation, reconciliation into tolerance, and hope into activism divorced from ultimate redemption. Conclusion
And unless the church recovers the full gospel—the gospel that addresses both personal sin and systemic brokenness through Christ’s finished work—we will continue to see social justice efforts that, while well-intentioned, ultimately lack the power to bring true and lasting renewal.
Now is the time for the church to return to its true center—Christ crucified and risen—and from that center, proclaim justice, mercy, and redemption to a world desperate for more than affirmation. Only when justice is welded to the cross and anchored in the resurrection will it have the weight to endure, the grace to heal, and the hope to transform. Let us be the generation that refuses to settle for a shallow substitute. Let us bear witness to the full, beautiful gospel of Jesus Christ.
Bellah, R. N., Madsen, R., Sullivan, W. M., Swidler, A., & Tipton, S. M. (1985). Habits of the heart: Individualism and commitment in American life. University of California Press.
Rauschenbusch, W. (1917). A theology for the social gospel. The Macmillan Company.
Smith, C., & Denton, M. L. (2005). Soul searching: The religious and spiritual lives of American teenagers. Oxford University Press.