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

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.

"[10] 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.

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.

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.

They label moralistic therapeutic deism as a religion with the following traits: Critical realism (CR) is, in Smith's view, the most promising general approach to social science for best framing our research and theory.

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).