As I continue writing about the challenge of preaching in an age of religious pluralism, today’s post speaks to the way postmodern thinking relates to pluralism and how it relates to preaching. You can view the first two parts by clicking the links below.

Part 1: The Nature of Religious Pluralism

Part 2: Religious Pluralism in Church History

Postmodernism is a general theory that most say represents a departure from modernism. However, Keller believes that postmodernism is not a radical departure from modernism but a form of modernism that has been taken to the extreme. Therefore, he does not call it postmodernism but late modernity. The root idea of modernity was overturning all authority outside the self.[1]Postmodernism claims that the self is unreliable; therefore, there is no authority.

Consequently, postmodernists harbor no concept of absolute, universal, or objective truth. Matters of truth are relative. Christians can claim to proclaim the truth, but a claim to truth does not determine truthfulness. Further, how can the Christian’s claim of truth be valid if there is no such thing?

If there is no universal truth, then everything is simply a choice. Postmodernity could be called the generation of choices. Postmodernism says that since we do not and cannot know truth, it is all right to believe anything you want, but you must believe in something.[2]Freedom of choice has become the one sacred value. Discrimination or exclusion has become the only moral evil. Everyone is free to live in any way they choose, as long as it doesn’t restrain someone else’s freedom. However, the problem with this theory is the assumption that we all know what harm is or that it can be defined without recourse to deep beliefs about right and wrong. The sacralizing of personal choice, therefore, erodes community and fragments society.[3]

Postmodernism’s Christian Roots

The postmodernist mindset grew out of a Christian understanding of the world. The importance of individual freedom and personal choice grew from Christian Protestant theology. Traditionally, the family or the tribe defined a person’s commitments. Christianity, however, saw every person as created in the image of God and possessing individual dignity. Western society has gone far beyond that to become radically and increasingly individualistic.

While many ancient societies believed in a circular pattern of history in which there is no beginning and no end, postmodernists have absconded with the idea of historical progress taken from Christian ideas but detached it from any idea of divine control. Therefore, the idea of progress is derived from a Christian worldview.

 Postmodernists are highly moral but don’t ground their morality in some source outside themselves. They seek reform to improve the lives of others, but without reason outside of oneself, the question is, “Why should we?” Their reasoning doesn’t make sense. The postmodernist gives no reasoning for one culture’s understanding of equality to be valid while another’s is invalid. They simply assert it. Since honestly secular people can’t admit the source of their central moral values and their Christian history, it makes them imperialistic. There is no universal understanding of moralism; one can only shout louder or repress another to make their view dominant. The only way to get from moral feelings to moral obligations is to appeal to some moral source or norm of right and wrong outside of both cultures or individuals that validates, invalidates, or revises their competing internal moral feelings. The ideas of freedom of choice, historical progression, and justice or morality are derived from a Christian worldview.[4]

Postmodernism’s Influence on Religion

Most social scientists do not think of secularization as the societal trend toward the abolition of religion but as the one that tends toward the marginalization of religion.[5]This describes the postmodern culture. The postmodernist doubts religion’s veracity and ability to provide meaning in a culture where understanding can be grasped without reliance on religious beliefs.[6]Religion no longer holds the answer to many of the world’s questions; science has answered them. Accordingly, religion is viewed as optional. It is simply another choice.

The smorgasbord of religious options open to postmodernists rivals the array at a cafeteria. Other religious systems such as Islam, New Age, and varieties of Eastern cultic religions unapologetically vie for postmodern peoples’ attention and allegiance. And why not when one system’s matters of religion, philosophy, and morals are considered as valid as another’s? Due to the notion of no absolute truth within postmodernism, Christianity has become one option among many.[7] 

Whereas modernity challenged Christianity as false and sought to eliminate it, postmodernity has rendered it ineffective more successfully by neutering it. Christianity’s vitality has been sapped. It has been relativized, trivialized, and marginalized. Carson gives an illustration of this using a college student. Rather than the challenge toward Christianity she might have experienced during the reign of modernism, he says, “She will find many lecturers convincing her that the meaning of her religion, as in all religion, is merely communal bias and therefore is relative, subjective. No religion can make valid claims of a metaphysical nature. Truth, whatever it is, does not reside in an object, historical or otherwise, that infinite human beings can read; rather, it resides in fallible, faulty, and finite knowers who themselves look at things a certain way only because they belong to a certain section of society.”[8] So she walks away from her Christian faith.

Nevertheless, people look for something else to give some significance to their existence. A significant postmodern emphasis is the pursuit of transcendence. Today people desire to break out of the mundane. People long for spiritual experiences that break them out of their routines. They expect any religious system to which they would give their allegiance to speak to the daily life situations they face. The hope for postmodern people is in the incarnation.[9]