Making Peace with Postmodernism

I can remember when the subject of postmodernism was a trendy topic at every Bible lectureship. In fact, in the mid-to-late nineties you didn't really have a legitimate lectureship without a class on postmodernism. I attended some of these classes until I got tired of hearing the same stuff over and over again.

Looking back on our (speaking from my experience in Churches of Christ) early tone and rhetoric, I would say it was skeptical at best and down-right combative at worst. Postmodernism was viewed as the great cultural threat to the Church or even to the very concept of objective truth in general. It seemed that no matter how many lectureships and articles we produced on postmodernism that we usually always focused on its emphases of pluralism and insistence on subjectivity. If anyone dared to raise a positive element of postmodernism, they were usually eyed with suspicion...maybe they don't believe in objective truth either.

Now keep in mind that this is mainly my subjective recollection. I am sure we produced some fine scholarly work on the relationship between postmodernism and the gospel, but I was either to simplistic to recognize it, or I just never went on a hunt to find it.

Still I bet my recollection isn't too far off. It seems to me that our analysis of postmodern culture is much more sophisticated today. We recognize that both subjectivity and pluralism present challenges for those of the Christian faith. However, I think we eventually began to realize we were critiquing postmodernism from a modern vantage point (which is full of anti-Christian bias as well, but that is the subject of another blog) instead of a biblical/Christian worldview critique.

Now we seem to appreciate that postmoderns place a great emphasis on authentic relationships and spirituality. Postmodernism also keeps us honest in forcing us to own up to the reality that we all have biases. Truth itself may not be subjective, but we cannot evaluate truth claims in a detached and objective manner. Objective truth is still disseminated through the subjective individual. Christians are finally beginning to see the rationale in putting down our combative rhetoric against postmodernism and instead learning to contextualize the gospel for a postmodern audience.

In some ways, we are making peace with postmodernism; not because we think it is thoroughly biblical (and we must know and show where it is not), but because we realize that is no less biblical than the modernism that preceded it. Or maybe its because we finally realized that instead of focusing all of our energy on condemning the prevailing culture, we had better start finding a way to redeem it.

A good read on this subject (especially for preachers, but for all church leaders too) is Chris Altrock's Preaching to Pluralists: How to Proclaim to Christ in a Postmodern age.