The instantiation of postmodern preferences has had varying effects on ecclesial communities, and has even given rise to new religious groups.

Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong, “Tower of Babel” painting, Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo

The salient characteristics of postmodern philosophy can be seen in many aspects of contemporary culture. In particular, the “flight from being (or truth)” is particularly evident in the areas of politics, ethics, and religion and is not constrained by the principle of non-contradiction. The rejection of grand narratives, fragmentation of knowledge, loss of the human subject, and so-called “death of man,” have had particularly devastating consequences on both the academic study of theology, and the practice of religion. Philosophers, theologians, and indeed entire ecclesial communities have attempted to adapt the Christian faith to this new perspective.

The instantiation of postmodern preferences has had varying effects on ecclesial communities, and has even given rise to new religious groups. Due to the absence of a Magisterium, the Protestant mainline has been greatly weakened, and the religious culture of the United States profoundly changed, by postmodern influences. New groups have also emerged that explicitly appeal to the postmodern mind, such as the so-called “Emerging Church.” With the formation of the Unitarian Universalist Church in 1961, the postmodern project finds an even more profound realization. Finally, one encounters the most extreme instantiation of the postmodern preferences in the pensiero debole (weak thought) and teologia debole (weak theology) of the Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo. Nonetheless, whatever the approach may be, any endeavor to marry the postmodern preferences to Christianity will be deleterious to encountering the central message of the Gospel summed up in the ancient acronym: ΙΧΘΥΣ—Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior —“for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12 RSV)

The Postmodern Project

Postmodernity is not simply a philosophical movement that follows modernism, but rather is a reaction to it. The Italian archbishop and theologian, Bruno Forte, offers the insightful metaphor of light and darkness: “The night is that which follows the setting of the light. If the light is the metaphor of the modern spirit, the night is the metaphor of postmodernity, that is, of this time in which the strong reason of modernity is rediscovered as a weak, uncertain, and restless reason. The night is a time of shipwrecks.”

Archbishop Forte draws from a commentary by the German philosopher, Hans Blumemberg, on the work of the ancient Roman writer, Lucretius, entitled De Rerum Natura. According to Blumemberg, the Epicurian mentality of ancient Rome could be understood in the story of a spectator who observes a shipwreck. While he is filled with terror witnessing the disaster, he takes consolation in the fact that his feet are firmly rooted on the land. He might have the thought, “Poor fellow…well…at least it isn’t me.” The postmodern man though finds himself on the sinking ship. He must seek to gather the remaining pieces of the ship and build another boat in order to survive.

In the darkness, in the midst of the shipwreck of contemporary thought, “that which is put in crisis is not so much ‘meaning’ (senso), but the quest (ricerca ) for meaning.” The struggle with modernity was the quest for hope and meaning in a world dominated by cold reason and calculation. However, in the “great drama” of the night of postmodernism, one must confront an attitude of indifference in which everything is “dim, ephemeral, fleeting….The crisis of postmodernity is, in sum, the loss of the taste of seeking the meaning to live and to die.”

The conditions for the emergence of postmodernism can be traced back to the existentialism of Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, as well as the atheism and nihilism of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. While modernism fell into the error of asserting that “being” is posited by cognitive consciousness, postmodernism suggests that any subjective foundation which is achieved can be the object of a more radical deconstruction. Therefore, the modernist foundation of cognitive consciousness may be further resolved into social praxis, history, literary criticism, language, or aesthetics. In opposition to modernist humanists who focused on man’s consciousness and free will as the source of his thought and action, the human subject itself is deconstructed by postmoderns and no longer the receiver of meaning or a being of central importance.

Postmodern thinkers suggest that the unconscious mind is the dominant force in man, and that consciousness is severely constrained by the constructs of human language with which man attempts to “create reality.” It is not surprising then that this radical deconstruction creates hostility to any truth that is “suspiciously” given without the receiving subject assigning it meaning. This phenomenon is referred to as postmodern paranoia, and ultimately fosters a loss of the human subject—the “death of man.” While Nietzsche intended the “death of God” to be an impetus for man to rise up and be the one who proclaims what is good and what is evil, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault devalued this “victory” when they radicalized this concept even further by proclaiming the “death of man.” The American philosopher, Joseph Rice, brilliantly captures the distressing consequence of this death: “Even if we trans-value all values, we do it within a culture centered on man. If man is dead, there is no cultural center, and it is possible to overturn the very idea of culture itself.”

In his commentary on Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, the Baptist theologian and literature scholar, Ralph C. Wood, points out that:

Chesterton rightly discerned that Nietzsche was the ultimate exemplar of the turn to the subject that began with Kant—indeed, that he would be the philosophical father of the postmodern and irrationalist century to come. Though in 1908, Nietzsche had just recently been translated into English, Chesterton saw immediately that he would inaugurate the triumph of will over reason. With remarkable acuity, Chesterton goes to the heart of the matter: “Will, they say, creates. The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not reason. The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it … They say choice itself is the divine thing.” Whereas the real was once the rational, it is now the chosen and the felt. {emphasis added}

While the medieval philosophers began their ricerche with metaphysics, i.e., speculative access to being, and modernist thinkers gave priority to ethics, i.e., practical access to meaning, the postmodernist believes that aesthetics is foundational. Through emphasizing “style,” postmodernism denies meaning as part of its flight from truth.

Postmodernism also gives emphasis to conflict as a positive value. This is in stark contrast to Aristotelian philosophy, which sees contradiction as a dead end. Postmodern philosophy goes beyond the Hegelian Dialectic to make conflict a first principle. “Ultimate resolution is not the goal.” In this spirit, postmodern thinkers also express a disbelief and rejection of grand narratives. As Wood points out:

If objectivist reason gone mad is the perfect description of modernity, the subjectivist denial of reason is the dementia of postmodernity. François Lyotard famously defined postmodernism as the suspicion of all meta-narratives: of all totalizing and exhaustive explanations, whether in the Copernican and Newtonian science of the Enlightenment, or in the Christian creeds that narrate the story of the entire cosmos.

The modernist grand narratives of the triumph of science and engineering, as well as the spread of democracy and liberty, were not taken seriously. Suspicion and disbelief filled the void, and interdisciplinary research possibilities and systematic knowledge were deemed impossible:

The central postmodernist premise is that multiple viewpoints and multiple interests enlarge our comprehension of the finally incomprehensible universe, whereas a singular and definitive perspective denies this irreducible multiplicity of viewpoints. As with rationalist modernism, so with irrationalist postmodernism: There is much truth in it. All our seeing is indeed subjective and culture-bound. We behold the world through the lenses of our own conceptions and assumptions. All truth is filtered and sieved, all understanding rooted in time and place and community. There is no view from nowhere, no godlike perch from which we can view the world neutrally—as if it were God’s own view. But from the valid premise that there is no such thing as naked knowledge, postmodern relativists and emotivists reach invalid conclusions. They hold that we can make no comparative moral judgments, engage in no time-transcending religious arguments, allow no privileging of certain cultures—for example, cultures that dignify women over cultures that demean them, or even governments that enhance democratic freedoms over those that destroy them. {emphasis added}

The Roman Catholic theologian, the Rev. Isaías Díez del Río, O.S.A., identifies postmodern preferences, which perhaps, more than any other description, capture the essence of postmodern thought. Postmoderns prefer :

The individual to the universal The psychological to the ideological Communication to communion Information to knowledge (truth) Diversity to homogeneity Permissiveness to coercion Multi-criteria to norms and dogma An eclectic approach to a systematic one What is vital and existential to what is logical and reasonable Opinion to ideas and thought Sentiments to reason Artisanship to art Aesthetics to ethics Syncretism to unity of belief Multiculturalism to culture Complete irrationalism to absolute rationalism What is particular to what is universal or cosmopolitan What is private and personal to what is public and social Egoism to solidarity Subjectivity to objectivity Personal impulses and instinctual feelings to objective norms and values Pleasure to asceticism and violence Options to obligations Frankness to secrecy Human needs to technological demands Multiplicity and difference to uniqueness and uniformity Micro to macro Minorities to majorities Local/concrete contexts to global contexts Marginal dissent to global consensus Micro-groups to macro-communities Emotional, sectarian communities to ecclesial communities Spontaneous leaders to legal or traditional leaders Personalism to authority “Deconstruction” of the inherited world to its affirmation “Decolonization” to colonization The people, and ethnic groups, to the nation Adolescent immaturity to adult maturity Ambiguity to clarity and distinction What is weak to what is strong What is frivolous to what is serious What is ephemeral, unstable, and transitory, to what is firm, stable, and lasting Leisure and partying to work Consumerism to production

The instantiation of these preferences in the Protestant mainline, the “emerging Church,” the Unitarian Universalist Church, and Vattimo’s post-theist “Christianity” will be identified in the subsequent analysis.

Postmodernism in the Protestant Mainline

Mainline Protestantism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been saturated with postmodern thought. In particular, the postmodern preference of the individual over the universal has been devastating to liberal Protestantism. When an ecclesial community no longer maintains a shared belief system, what remains? The American philosopher, Joseph Bottum, answers the question:

Episcopalian, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran—the name hardly matters anymore. It’s true that if you dig through the conservative manifestos and broadsides of the past 30 years, you find one distressed cry after another, each bemoaning the particular path by which this or that denomination lost its intellectual and doctrinal distinctiveness. After you’ve read a few of these outraged complaints, however, the targets begin to blur together. The names may vary, but the topics remain the same: the uniformity of social class at the church head­quarters, the routine genuflections toward the latest political causes, the feminizing of the clergy, the unimportance of the ecclesial points that once defined the denomination, the substitution of leftist social action for Christian evangelizing, and the disappearance of biblical theology. All the mainline churches have become essentially the same church: their histories, their theologies, and even much of their practice, lost to a uniform vision of social progress. Only the names of the corporations that own their properties seem to differ.

Without a Magisterium, no sure mechanism is in place to prevent Protestant leaders from teaching ideas radically contradictory to their own tradition, e.g., the extreme case of the Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong. While Spong is certainly not a typical Episcopal clergyman, it is shocking that he would be elected by the Episcopal clergy and laity of northern New Jersey to be their spiritual leader because he rejects theism itself. He also denies the theological value of the biblical story of creation, the fact of virgin conception of Christ, all biblical miracles, the sacrificial and redemptive value of the Cross, the Resurrection of Jesus, the Ascension of Jesus, biblical morality, the value of prayer, and the fact of eternal life. Spong served for 24 years as an Episcopal bishop, and remains in good standing, albeit retired. The postmodern preference for personal impulses and instinctual feelings to objective norms and values is obviously present here.

Not surprisingly, the liberal religion project has not been a fruitful one, and appears to be destroying itself. An illustrative case comes to us from the influential German Reformed theologian, Jürgen Moltmann. “Liberation theology, secular theology, feminist theology, eco-theology—Jürgen Moltmann lent a measure of Germanic gravitas to them all,” said the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus. In Moltmann’s autobiography, A Broad Place, he recounts a significant theological conference in 1971: “The discussions were hard but heartfelt, for our common concern was the one common truth. The conference was one of the last of its kind, before postmodern arbitrariness set in, and everyone was content with his own truth.” As usual, Neuhaus’ comment is incisive:

That last sentence is poignant. A Broad Placeis the story of a greatly gifted man who has lived robustly, and is touchingly grateful for friends and honors. It would have been a more interesting book had the author reflected self-critically on his contributions to the circumstance of liberal theology that made that conference “one of the last of its kind.”

The postmodern preference of diversity over homogeneity apparently spelled the end of this gathering of theologians.

The adoption of postmodern preferences by the mainline has not only led to a loss of identity, but very likely has also contributed to a severe drop in membership. While extensive social science studies would be required to conclusively determine all the causes for declining numbers, preferences for permissiveness to coercion and options to obligations are certainly not conducive to encourage regular Sunday attendance and, ultimately, continued membership in an ecclesial community. Perhaps, the most extreme example can be seen in the Episcopal Church. In 1959, the Episcopal Church’s membership hit an all-time high of 3,444,265. This level was maintained until about 1967, when a decline began, bringing the membership down to 2,057,292 in 2008—a loss of 40 percent! According to the Anglican journalist, David Virtue, the future of the Episcopal Church does not look hopeful. Virtue analyzed the average Sunday attendance of the 6,825 Episcopal parishes in the United States. He found that 4,597 parishes have 100 or less parishioners per Sunday!

The United Methodist Church was formed in 1968 as a result of mergers of like-minded Methodist communities, beginning with 10,990,720 members. By 2007, the UMC membership had dropped to 7,853,987—losing 28 percent of its members. Similarly, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was the fruit of another merger in 1983 and began with 3,122,213 members. By 2008, membership had declined to 2,844,952—a loss of nine percent. Finally, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America was formed from a 1988 merger, beginning with 5,251,534 members. Within 20 years, membership in the ELCA had dropped to 4,633,887—a loss of 12 percent.

The Catholic laity is not immune from the influences of the larger, postmodern culture of America, and many parishes have experienced declining numbers on Sundays mornings. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that from 1998-2008, membership in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, a denomination which has not allowed the postmodern preferences to affect its doctrine, law, and liturgy, grew 22 percent to 67,117,016. While many factors affect Church membership numbers such as immigration, exogenous cultural influences, etc., the stability of the Church’s teaching on faith and morals has no doubt kept it from drifting into postmodern insignificance. Similarly, the constancy of doctrine, at least in the area of morals, has been a stabilizing factor in evangelical congregations. The tradition of pastors rebuking other pastors, sometimes quite strongly, who are perceived to be deviating from an evangelical interpretation of Scripture, mitigates postmodern influences as well.

The “Emerging” Church

The Anabaptist New Testament scholar, Scot McKnight, offers a summary of the common perception of the Emerging Church (EC):

It is said that emerging Christians confess their faith like mainliners—meaning they say things publicly they don’t really believe: They drink like Southern Baptists—meaning, to adapt some words from Mark Twain, they are teetotalers when it is judicious.

They talk like Catholics—meaning they cuss and use naughty words.

They evangelize and theologize like the Reformed—meaning they rarely evangelize, yet theologize all the time.

They worship like charismatics—meaning with their whole bodies, some parts tattooed.

They vote like Episcopalians—meaning they eat, drink, and sleep on their left side.

And, they deny the truth—meaning they’ve got a latte-soaked copy of Derrida in their smoke- and beer-stained backpacks.

While this characterization is obviously intended to provoke the reader to laughter, it is a helpful introduction to the complexity of this movement. More seriously, McKnight identifies five themes that are useful to understand the Emerging Church. It is:

Provocative

Postmodern

Praxis-Oriented

Post-Evangelical

Political

McKnight is upfront with the fact that the “prophetic” stances and techniques of EC pastors and writers can be divisive and end up doing more harm than good. With regard to postmodernity, he explicitly rejects the “denial of truth” but welcomes the rejection of meta-narratives. McKnight borrows three categories from the EC pastor, Doug Pagitt. Pagitt suggests that there are EC pastors who “minister to postmoderns, others with postmoderns, and still others as postmoderns.” The Norwegian theologian, F. LeRon Shults, would certainly self-identify with the latter type:

From a theological perspective, this fixation with propositions can easily lead to the attempt to use the finite tool of language on an absolute Presence that transcends and embraces all finite reality. Languages are culturally constructed symbol systems that enable humans to communicate by designating one finite reality in distinction from another. The truly infinite God of Christian faith is beyond all our linguistic grasping, as all the great theologians from Irenaeus to Calvin have insisted, and so the struggle to capture God in our finite propositional structures is nothing short of linguistic idolatry.