The following are excerpts from the article “Postmodernism: The ‘Spirit of the Age’” by Jim Leffel)
We live in strange times. When I was in college twenty years ago, Christianity was under fire because it was thought to be unscientific–and consequently, untrue. Today, Christianity is widely rejected, not because it was critically examined and found wanting, but merely because it claims to be true. Increasingly, American academics regard claims to objective and universal truth as intolerant and uninformed. What accounts for this bizarre and growing consensus? It’s called postmodernism. Postmodern ideology rejects the authority of reason and views all claims to objective truth to be dangerous.
[Postmodernists state that] it is arrogant to suggest that someone’s religious beliefs might be wrong. By arrogant, most people mean intolerant–a term that has come to have a whole new meaning in recent years. Intolerance used to refer to bigotry or prejudice. But now, intolerance [refers to] simply disagreeing [with another’s] beliefs.
The recent movie “At Play in the Fields of the Lord” illustrates this point. In a conversation between an Amazonian Indian and a Christian missionary, the Indian says, “If the Lord made Indians the way they are, who are you people to make them different?” This is one of the defining sentiments of our day. Attempting to convert is unacceptable because it implies standing in judgment over others’ beliefs.
[Tolerance is promoted for basically every religious belief system…except one…that is, except for] what is pejoratively labeled “fundamentalism.” Fundamentalism doesn’t mean what it did in the early decades of this century. Nor does it refer to religious extremism, like the Shiites’ holy war against the West. Today, fundamentalists are those who believe that religious truths are objective and therefore subject to rational investigation.
We are witnessing a broad based backlash against reason in our culture. This backlash is widely promoted in contemporary higher education. The argument is that every time somebody claims to be in possession of the truth (especially religious truth), it ends up repressing people. So its best to make no claims to truth at all.
Rejecting objective truth is the cornerstone of postmodernism. In essence, postmodern ideology declares an end to all ideology and all claims to truth.
Postmodernism abandons modernism, the humanist philosophy of the European Enlightenment. Enlightenment thinking is based on the authority of French philosopher Rene Descartes’ autonomous man–the one who starts from his own thought (“I think, therefore I am”) and builds his world view systematically from reason alone. Modernists built a culture that exalted technological achievement and mastery over the natural order.
But modernism planted the seeds of its own undoing. As arrogant, autonomous modernists conquered the globe and subjugated nature in the name of progress, oppressed and marginalized people have responded. “Progress toward what?” they cry. Postmodernists say that the idols of autonomous reason and technological proliferation have brought the modern age to the brink of disaster. The “myth of progress” ends up in a nightmare of violence, both for marginalized people and for the earth. [The current Environmentalist movement is a child of Postmodernistic thought.]
Postmodernism rejects modernism’s autonomous individualism and all that follows from it. Rather than seeing humanity as an ocean of individuals, postmodernists think of humans as “social constructs.” We do not exist or think independently of the community with which we identify. So we can’t have independent or autonomous access to reality. All of our thinking is contextual. Postmodernists argue that we [are to] view reality through the lens of culture. Consequently, postmodernists reject the possibility of objective truth. Reality itself turns out to be a “social construct” or paradigm. [Truth is dictated by social or cultural mores; truth changes as cultures’ ideologies change.] In the place of objective truth and what postmodernists call “metanarratives” – comprehensive world views.
Postmodernists hold that the pretense of objective truth always does violence by excluding other voices (regarding other world views to be invalid), and marginalizing the vulnerable by scripting them out of the story. Truth claims, we are told, are essentially tools to legitimate power. That’s why in postmodern culture, the person to be feared is the one who believes that we can discover ultimate truth. The dogmatist, the totalizer, the absolutist is both naive and dangerous.
Consequently, rather than dominating others with our “version of reality,” we should accept all beliefs as equally valid. Openness without the restraint of reason, and tolerance without moral appraisal are the new postmodern mandates.
[Postmodernism believes it is wrong to state that someone’s belief system is ‘wrong’. It is ‘right for them’, therefore, it is correct. The one pointing out that it is wrong, is wrong. This type of Postmodernistic thought is prevalent amongst Americans today.]
George Barna’s research shows that “about four out of every ten adults strongly concurred that when Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others pray to their god, all of those individuals are actually praying to the same god, but simply use different names for that deity. Only one out of every six adults strongly disagreed with this view.”
If all religions are simply culturally conditioned avenues to the same God, then no one is really lost. Spiritual darkness is not really darkness, but merely a different shade of light. Barna notes that the logical extension of this syncretism is a growing lack of interest in evangelism. He states, “It was instructive to discover that less than half of the born again Christians and those who attend evangelical churches strongly agreed that they have…a responsibility” [to reach the lost].
I don’t know of any evangelical scholar or pastors who teach universalism. And the hallmark of the evangelical church is a passionate commitment to evangelism. So how have so many evangelicals come to think this way? Much like everyone else– it’s absorbed through uncritical participation in postmodern culture.
(From the article ‘Postmodernism and You’)
Postmodernism may have originated in the province of academics and eggheads, but you will encounter it in your daily life, no matter who you are. Read about postmodern positions in their own words to learn how you will see postmodernism affecting you and your children in the following areas:
Education: In postmodern public education, teachers are no longer transmitters of information to children. Instead, teachers facilitate children as the children construct their own knowledge. Who are we to say that western science is better than the psychoenergetics (precognition, psychokinesis, remote viewing, etc.) of ancient Egypt?
Health Care: So-called alternative medical techniques were considered pure superstition a short time ago. Not any more! Now, authors like Deepak Chopra and Dolores Krieger have brought Ayurvedic Medicine and Therapeutic Touch into mainstream hospitals and nursing schools with the help of postmodern rhetorical techniques.
History: Today we have Women’s history, Gay and Lesbian History, Black History and Native American History. It’s no exaggeration to say that in postmodern cultural history, each marginalized group had their own experience, their own reality. The goal of history is to give voice to the silenced, or marginalized minorities.
Government: The Critical Legal Studies movement is increasingly influential. This radical reading of the law sees all law as political constructs designed to hold down the poor, women, minorities, or those of alternative sexual preference. They think judges cannot be “fair” in any objective sense, and are therefore really only engaging in the theater of justice while pursuing their own agenda.