Christian Smith

Christian Stephen Smith (born 1960) is an American sociologist, currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.

Smith's research focuses primarily on religion in modernity, adolescents and emerging adults, sociological theory, philosophy of science, the science of generosity, American evangelicalism, and culture.

Smith is well known for his contributions to the sociology of religion, particularly his research into adolescent spirituality, as well as for his contributions to sociological theory and his advocacy of critical realism.

Smith was born on October 23, 1960.

He attended Wheaton College (1978–1979) and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology from Gordon College in 1983.

Smith earned his Master of Arts (1987) and Doctor of Philosophy (1990) degrees from Harvard University, where he also spent a year studying theology at Harvard Divinity School.

Smith began his academic career as an instructor, and then assistant professor at Gordon College.

In 1994 he joined University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was an assistant professor, full professor, and then Stuart Chapin Professor of Sociology.

He remained at North Carolina for 12 years before moving to Notre Dame as the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society.

He is also a Faculty Fellow of the Kroc Institute for Peace Studies.

Smith has been awarded more than $20 million worth of research grants from the Pew Charitable Trusts, Lilly Endowment Inc., the John Templeton Foundation, the Templeton Religion Trust, and other foundations and institutes.

Smith was awarded the “Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring, 1995-96” by the Graduate Student Association, Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Smith was co-author with Mark Regnerus on the 1999 "Outstanding Article Award", granted by the American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Religion, for "Selective Deprivatization Among American Religious Traditions: The Reversal of the Great Reversal", published in Social Forces.

Michael Emerson and Smith's Divided by Faith was the winner of the "2001 Outstanding Book Award" from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.

This was followed in 2002 by an “Excellence in Mentoring Award, 2001-2002” by the Graduate Student Association, Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He previously won Christianity Today 2005 Distinguished Book Award for his 2005 book, co-authored with Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.

In December, Choice Magazine selected What Is a Person? as one of its Top 25 (out of 7000 reviewed) Outstanding Academic Titles of 2011.

In his 2005 book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers co-written with Melinda Lundquist Denton, he introduced the term moralistic therapeutic deism (abbreviated MTD) to describe the common religious beliefs exhibited by American youth in a survey.

It has also been referred to as egonovism.

The book summarized the "National Study of Youth and Religion", privately funded by the Lilly Endowment.

They label moralistic therapeutic deism as a religion with the following traits:

"#A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

Critical realism (CR) is, in Smith's view, the most promising general approach to social science for best framing our research and theory.

CR, as a philosophy of (social) science (not a sociological theory per se), offers the best alternative to the problems and limits presented by positivist empiricism, hermeneutical interpretivism, strong social constructionism, and postmodernist deconstruction.

It is the meta-theoretical direction in which American sociology needs to move

Smith's work in CR involves ''What is a Person?

In 2007, Smith's alma mater, Gordon College, presented him with the "Alumnus of the Year" award in "recognition of his many accomplishments and work as one of the leading Christian sociologists in the country."

He was also awarded Christianity Today 2010 Distinguished Book Award for the same book, Souls in Transition.

The book also received the “Cheryl Frank Memorial Prize for 2010,” from the International Association for Critical Realism.

Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up (Chicago 2010) (with Moral, Believing Animals (OUP 2003) forming a pre-CR theoretical backdrop); To Flourish or Destruct: A Personalist Theory of Human Goods, Motivations, Failure, and Evil (Chicago 2014), and Religion: What it Is, How it Works, and Why it Matters (Princeton 2017).

Smith is author, co-author, and editor of numerous scholarly books, articles, book chapters, book reviews, and research reports.

A selection of Smith's books includes:

He was awarded the Lilly Fellows Program Distinguished Book Award in 2011 for his 2009 book, co-authored with Patricia Snell, Souls in Transition: the Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults.

Smith received for the same book the 2011 Honorable Mention Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence from American Publisher’s, Philosophy category.

In 2012, the American Sociological Association section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity awarded Smith with the Distinguished Career Award.

The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion granted Smith its Distinguished Book Award, 2018, for his 2017 book, Religion: What it Is, How it Works, and Why it Matters (Princeton).

Smith received the Notre Dame Graduate Student Union’s Graduate Student Mentoring Award for 2020-2021.