postmodern preaching

Welcome to the Postmodern World

Back in the 1960's and 1970's, there was a sticker on cars in America that read, "Question Authority." It was a modernist thought to the core, saying that we must question tradition if we are to discover truth. But in the 1990’s there was another sticker: "Question Reality." That's postmodernism. It is saying: “There is no true reality, not even your own.”

Simply speaking, postmodernism is the philosophy that says absolute truth cannot be discovered at all, neither through reason nor tradition. This is now our world. Postmodernism is the prevailing philosophy of our time, whether or not people use the term.

The purpose of this website is to explore how to preach Christ to postmodern people.

So, What Led to Postmodernism?

To understand postmodernism it is necessary to go all the way back to seventeenth and eighteenth century Europe. A movement of intellectual freedom arose then called the Enlightenment. It questioned medieval tradition and taught that reason alone was the way to discern truth and reality.

The enlightenment worldview rested on the orderly cosmology of Sir Isaac Newton. Because the cosmos could be understood in a rational way, reason appeared objective.

This lasted until the time of Einstein. During the long reign of Newtonian cosmology, it was easy to believe in rationality and absolutes. But in the twentieth century, cosmology abandoned Newton for relativity theory and quantum theory. Einstein’s discoveries that time, space, energy and matter are relative have altered the way the world is now perceived.

Even as early as 1925 Bertrand Russell expressed the view that once people became used to the idea of relativity, it would forever change their way of thinking. They would abandon a belief in absolutes and begin to regard all concepts as relative.

Russell also noted that it takes time for the implications of a new cosmology to influence philosophy and society in general. After Einstein, thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Stanley Fish and David Tracy eventually developed relativistic thinking into a new school of philosophy called de-constructionism, which gave rise to postmodernism.

The postmodern worldview is summed up perfectly in an editorial cartoon that appeared in December, 1998 in the Albuquerque Journal. It portrayed a boy sitting on Santa's lap. Santa is saying to him, "and have you been a good boy this year?" The boy replies, "It depends on what good means." In back of him a girl is thinking, "65% of my peers say I'm good." Another girl in the Santa line says, "That's a private matter between me and my family." A boy says, "It's time to move on to the real issues: what I want."

Postmodernism is an anti-foundational worldview. It does not believe in absolutes at all. It affirms that objective truth in most realms is impossible, so that the only appropriate stance is the one that denies all possibility of objective truth. D.A. Carson observes: “The only absolute creed is the creed of pluralism.”

The Preaching Task

How does all of this affect Christian preaching? Some are now saying that we need to reinterpret the faith. "The Christian message is just a big metaphor for something bigger and grander," we are being told. "In the postmodern age, our task is to set aside the provincial aspects of our faith, develop the universal elements and make it more pluralistic."

But this would change the ancient message. Paul wrote, "The message of the cross ... is the power of God" (1 Cor 1:18). And, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Romans 1:16). I see no need to change the message. It's retooling we're after, not re-inventing. We want to know how to preach the apostolic faith more effectively to postmodern people.

In the game, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, it's hard to pin the tail in the right place while blindfolded. Many preachers today are like that. We're still preaching modernist sermons to a postmodern people. Even when we think we're on-target, when the scarf is removed, we find our sermons hanging there, having missed the donkey entirely.

We need to learn how to preach all over again. The special challenge we face as preachers in a postmodern world is to earn the right to be heard and believed.

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