This week continues the series on preaching in a postmodern relativistic culture. If you haven’t read the previous posts, you can access them below:

Part 1: The Nature of Religious Pluralism

Part 2: Religious Pluralism in Church History

Part 3: The Influence of Postmodernity on Religious Pluralism

Understanding the Current Culture

For the preacher of the gospel, understanding the people is vital.[1]Contemporary people are the victims of postmodernism far more than they are its perpetrators.[2] Whether it is recognized or not, acknowledged or not, there is a profound and bitter emptiness in the hearts of many men and women in Western culture.[3]Although the era is marked by unbelief and skepticism, it is overflowing with spiritual things. People today have a heightened sense of spiritual concern, though it is often based on misinformation and half-truths.[4]There are spots where people who don’t believe in Christianity or God feel pinched by their view of the world. These are the places where what they process to believe about the world does not fit their intuitions or experiences.[5]

The Christian preacher must understand that the culture has perceived the subject of the gospel as vaguely irrelevant to their lives. Biblical literacy is now practically dead in the culture.[6]Whereas evangelical churches once operated in societies in which Christian vocabulary was not wholly alien to the listener, that is changing rapidly. Fewer and fewer people find the messages understandable, much less persuasive.[7] A person who is essentially biblically illiterate but has absorbed substantial doses of new age theosophy will hear us saying things that we do not mean.[8]

In many parts of the country, the preacher cannot assume any biblical knowledge on the part of his hearers at all. If preaching outside the conservative enclaves in the country, the preacher is facing astonishing ignorance. Rising biblical illiteracy contributes to pluralism in that there is a declining percentage of citizens who are so biblically well-read that they can withstand pluralism’s onslaught. It is a vicious cycle in which pluralism leads to biblical illiteracy, leading to pluralism. This ensures that an entire generation will be ignorant of the most elementary structures of the Judeo-Christian heritage on which our civilization has been nurtured. They will not have the hooks on which to hang the gospel appeals that have been the preacher’s staple.  [9]

It is a mistake to think that the narratives of postmodernity do not profoundly shape faithful believers in our time.[10]Many professed believers inside the church have inevitably picked up some of the surrounding chatter and, being poorly ground in Scripture and theology, have incorporated some incompatible elements into their understanding of Christianity. Within the church, there are many Christians who, while retaining orthodox beliefs at a theoretical level, are very uncomfortable with any sermon that excludes anybody or any view, except what is judged to be the most peripheral.[11]

The reaction in the church has been a movement away from the centrality of the gospel and toward one of a dozen or more cultural causes. While these causes are not inherently wrong, the problem is the displacement of the gospel by one or more of these causes. Many modern Christians who become so deeply involved with one or more of these causes focus so narrowly on their issue that the gospel itself, while never denied, becomes of minor importance.[12]

Postmodernism narratives somewhat shape all Christians living in postmodern times. The narratives are grounded to a degree in Christian ideas and are therefore partly correct. The preacher must remind people where all these ideas came from and how they only make sense in a personal universe created by God.[13] A world both biblically illiterate and sold out to pluralism demands that our proclamation of the gospel be a subset of biblical theology.[14]

People long for guidance in living in these confusing times. At such a time as this, when people struggle with the need to make sense of life, when they long for meaning and acceptance, when many seem lonely and isolated, what better news than to discover that humanity is created and loved by God?[15]