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November 5, 2003
Hello everyone,
We have been unofficially meandering through a detailed examination of modern culture in the past several issues. Beginning in late August with Who Can it Be Now? Father God, Mother Church, we hinted at sociology as a useful tool for examining our culture and shifting the focus from the individual (as in psychology) to the community, in this case the corporate body of Christ. Since these newsletters chronicle my own life and thought as much as they provide a source of deeper study for others, it is worthy to note that this issue saw a turning point in the style and content of Le Penseur Réfléchit: I admitted that introspection and a certain seclusiveness characterized my life, feeling challenged to correct this lack of balance. The various forces that were bringing about this change stemmed from prior conversations with a sociology major, the beginning of a new semester with what is essentially a course in philosophy: Education and the Seduction of Modern Culture, my recent reading of C.S. Lewis’The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, my subsequent desire to purge myself of lingering prejudices against organized religion and its tendency to polarize and divide the Christian community, and other such factors.
With these influences rattling around in my brain, two issues later in Sociology and the Emerging Social Consciousness, we took a deeper look at sociology as a tool for understanding culture, using American history as our model to help explain the general trends in the collective Western world, for America represents a telling microcosm that roughly approximates the whole of Western development. This issue attempted to study something of the recent history of sociology, which, while making its own contribution to the whole relativistic mindset so prevalent in our culture today (most notably in the form of “hyper-tolerance”), nonetheless gained its wings in a very real historical context. In essence, this context was reform Darwinism, people such as Jane Addams actively seeking social reform to combat the injustice suffered under capitalism when big business and the federal government teamed up together to exploit the work force, many of them immigrants. Long hours, poor wages, dangerous working conditions, and a total lack of regulation caused these individuals to campaign for social reform, calling on the federal government to become more involved in the interests of the “little guy.” Such a focus would mean overturning United States precedent, for the Supreme Court had consistently overturned appeals in favor of big business and governmental troops were marshaled in to put down strikes and crush labor unions. Thus, we looked at American history through the 1920s as a model to understand the “emerging social consciousness” of Western thought, ignoring the following eighty plus years (for the sake of space and time considerations) and taking a leap from before the War era to explain the new “hyper-tolerance” of the twenty-first century.
Skipping an issue with What is Justice? A Socratic Dialog with a peek into Plato’s Republic, we picked the trail up again in the last issue, Flapper Girls and the Postmodern Revolution, attempting to bridge the gap in our previous “leap,” recognizing that the 1920s to the present leaves out a gap of over eighty years in which much happened. Rather than looking as much into history as we did in Sociology and the Emerging Social Consciousness, we looked to philosophy for an explanation of how things got to be the way they are today. Reconstituting the historical labels of social Darwinism (as manifested in the rationale behind big business) and reform Darwinism (as demonstrated by the reformers who sought to curb the abuses of capitalism), we substituted the larger heading of secular humanism in place of both. Secular humanism triumphed the teaching of Darwin and believed that in a world in which we were finally enlightened enough to realize that God was nothing other than a social construct to keep support, we worshipped in a “temple without a roof.” Human potentiality was wide open and the sky was the limit. Social Darwinism saw the wealthy elite realizing this dream, reform Darwinism extended the focus to the betterment of all peoples, attempting to raise the standards of everyone by pulling humanity up by its own bootstraps. Secular humanism in its various manifestations was then contrasted with the existentialism of the postwar era, a brief mention was made of postmodernity, and we concluded by contrasting the declarative method of evangelism with Dr. Francis Schaeffer’s presuppositional method. We will recap and further comment on these styles of evangelism in a moment.
Existentialism, as we might recall, was much more realistic in its appraisal of humanity. After suffering two major World Wars, the optimism of secular humanism in the greatness of man was beginning to wear rather thin. Existentialism honestly recognized that humanity had the capacity for great evil and saw this “temple without a roof” as being an awful curse rather than a great blessing. “Sure,” it said, “we have seen through our ancestors’ fabrication of God to ensure an orderly society; Darwin was surely correct in his scientific speculations. But look at what the loss of such a ‘noble lie’ has cost us. We are condemned to freedom, every choice we make bearing consequences with which we are forced to live. We are unconnected from the world around us, humanity an island, a freak of nature in an absurd universe where we feel love and sorrow and pain: and for what reason? We are alone in the universe, responsible for everything yet connected to nothing.” In summary, the only virtues existentialism could offer were courage and scorn: the courage to face life with your head held high and the scorn to simultaneously defy such a senseless existence by living with a stiff upper lip. Ah yes, courage and scorn: defy life with your head held high. You still create your own destiny of course, but it is surely no cause to celebrate. Deal with it.
Today, our thrust is a little different. We are going to use an even larger heading, calling both secular humanism and existentialism modernity. Together, these philosophies represent the prevailing trend in Western thought up through around the 1950s, this time period termed the modern era. We will examine how the focus began to shift from modernity to postmodernity and what this means in terms of understanding our times and adopting more effective strategies for sharing our Christian faith, revisiting Flapper Girls and the Postmodern Revolution’s styles of evangelism. We could well call existentialism the hinge upon which postmodernity turns outward from it modernistic framework. Put another way, the thesis of humanism was met with the antithesis of existentialism and has now culminated in a synthesis that fuses and transcends them both: postmodernism. We have just set up an equation and thrown our terms around as if they were nothing: humanism plus existentialism equals modernity; these internal tensions of modernity pitted against one another result in our current era: postmodernity. Yet is there any flesh and bones we can give these abstract descriptors? We are, after all, attempting to force a continuous stream of history into more or less rigorous boundaries that, it could be argued, are largely arbitrary.
For instance, it was enlightening to learn that existentialism largely grew its wings after World War II where disillusion in the hopefulness of humanity led to a more honest and pessimistic sense of understanding the world, for if indeed there is no God above and humanity has to rely solely on itself, is there any good cause to celebrate? Wouldn’t mourning be a more appropriate response? So you see, in essence what we have done is taken both the events in history and the way in which the culture has interpreted them and assigned corresponding name tags or labels: humanism, existentialism, modernity. These help us understand very complex factors much more easily, giving us working models to wrap our minds around the world at large. With this view in mind, to what events in history can we trace postmodernity, when the synthesis between humanism and existentialism began to be felt?
Perhaps we would do well to revisit the events leading up to the Second World War and pick up from there. Prior to the First World War when big business still had a monopoly on the nation, many reformers were strongly attracted to socialism and communism as we mentioned earlier in Sociology and the Emerging Social Consciousness. Particularly for the common laborer, the tenant farmer, the sharecropper, or anyone else who did not find themselves well-off, the idea of equality for all people and the glorification of the worker seemed heavenly. The upper echelon, of course, staunchly defended capitalism because it was making them rich. Yet many of this upper class were building their empires on the backs of their workers, grinding their heels deep into their flesh for good measure. It goes without saying that such actions further encouraged many of the impoverished and their sympathizers to turn to socialism.
Then came the First World War spanning from 1914 to 1918 in which the Triple Entente (an alliance including Great Britain, France, and Russia: later to include the United States) defeated the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). It caused a hole to appear in the optimism of humanism, especially for the Triple Entente who suffered far more losses and were involved in the War for the entire haul instead of the year and a half between April 1917 to the war’s end in November 1918 when American troops became involved long enough to tip the balance and finish the war. For the majority of Americans, the War meant that work was available in abundance, profiting nearly all and the “Roaring 20s” was in full swing. Now that capitalism was working, socialism—and its logical extension, communism—fell into ill favor. The Triple Entente was bitterly disappointed when the culmination of the Russian Revolution into the Russian Civil War of 1917 saw the “Red Russians” triumph, ushering socialism (it never quite reached the Marxist ideal of communism except in name only) into a significant portion of the Western world. In fact, when Russian bolshevism—that is, the Bolsheviks, the radical group within the Russian socialist party that became the communist party in 1918—created the so-called Third International in 1919—an association of communist leaders around the globe designed to overthrow capitalism—Americans were thrown into a panic. Historians call this event the “Red Scare of 1919” and it finally fizzled the following year. No, for prosperous America, capitalism was now in vogue like never before.
We spoke of how major industries changed the face of American landscape in the 1920s, in particular highlighting the automotive industry. There were, of course, other large industries as well that merit mention, such as avionics, the manufacture of synthetic fibers, and the film industry booming in Hollywood. We also mentioned that the spread of electricity to about eighty percent of the urban areas saw the rise of a number of new consumer goods, such as the vacuum cleaner, the electric range, the washing machine, and the ubiquitous radio that invited the salesman right into the American home with total impunity. Advertising campaigns were becoming increasing crafty, basing their sales pitches on psychological principles that appealed to prestige and status as much as the product itself; so too, sporting events such as boxing and college football were growing, as was the American national sport of baseball, encouraging people to spend money on tickets and fostering a greater sense of national unity. Whatever the case, capitalism was now a machine that was beginning to roll along much more smoothly and gaining increasing favor now that there was enough money to line the average American pocket and more leisure time in which to spend it: cars to buy, girls to date, appliances to aid the busy housewife. However, when the Great Depression hit in 1929 and persisted until the start of the Second World War in 1939, socialism and communism began to re-emerge as attractive ideas, for capitalism seemed a bit more tenuous in its tenets. Further, even during the prosperous twenties, the federal government was still very heavy-handed in putting down strikes and supporting big business at the expense of the workers.
This realization, for example, is glossed in Shadowlands, a romanticized version of the story of C.S. Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) and his short marriage (1956–1960) to the divorced Joy Davidman (starring Debra Winger), an American fan of his books who hailed from New York. She died of cancer in 1960 at the age of forty-five; Lewis died one week shy of his sixty-fifth birthday three years later on November 22, 1963, the same day American president John F. Kennedy was assassinated. At the point in the film from which we will extract our quotation, Joy is an unhappily married woman who has traveled to Europe and is simply getting acquainted with this great Christian author whose work was of great inspiration and benefit to her spiritual journey and intellectual pursuits. Lewis and Davidman (her married name is Gresham) have only just met after an exchange of letters and the two of them (accompanied by Lewis’ brother Warnie played by Edward Hardwicke) are climbing the steps to a bell tower in Cambridge. C.S. Lewis is referred to by his intimate nickname Jack and when the film picks up midway into their dialog, Joy is speaking of herself, presumably in reply to a question about her ethnicity:
Whatever else we are to make of this dialog, do you notice that neither choice—a fascist or a communist—represents a spiritual answer? Both demonstrate the full force of Darwinism as the prevailing philosophy of the day, largely unchallenged (and often even adopted) by the clergy. Now then, we already noted the reason why communism was revitalized during the Great Depression (which ended in 1938 on the eve of WWII in 1939): capitalism didn’t seem to be working and the government was still largely unsympathetic to the plight of workers, a factor the Great Depression only further exacerbated. But what does she mean by the other choice of fascism? Good question.
Fascism has a great deal to do with why the Second World War began in the first place. Starting in the 1920s, fascism was ushered into prominence by dictator Benito Mussolini of Italy (1922 to 1943 to be precise). Neither capitalism nor communism, fascism was characterized by five basic tenets: (1) supremacy of the state (centralized control of private enterprise), (2) governance by a dictator, (3) militant repression of opposition, (4) extreme nationalism, and (5) expansionism. The last three tenets in particular were what alarmed the Western world and prompted Joy’s comment that in 1938, if you were not a salvific communist, “you were a fascist and you conquered the world.” Fascism fanatically believed it was the only way and forcibly perpetuated itself, brutally suppressing any opposition that stood in its path. In essence, it was a type of totalitarianism.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Democrat from New York, was the American president who was noted for his efforts to massage the American economy during the Great Depression, following Republican president Herbert Hoover, who became very unpopular when he resisted the idea of government assistance for the American populace. True to Republican ideals of the time (and to some degree now as well), Hoover felt that charity and goodwill should be private affairs left to the citizen, though as a last ditch effort, he did set a precedent with his development of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC). The American public saw this move as offering too little and arriving too late. Roosevelt, on the other hand, true to his Democratic Party, felt that it was the responsibility of the federal government to provide relief, causing the American public to sweep him in office, primed and ready for his way of thinking. He ushered in the now proverbial New Deal, a series of reforms that were already set into motion within his first twenty-four hours of office. President for an unprecedented four consecutive terms, his first and second New Deal policies vastly expanded the federal government and brought in a number of reforms that championed the common laborer, which again, is true to the spirit of the Democrats, who claim to support the common man. No matter what one thinks of political parties, FDR changed history, aspects of the New Deal lingering on right up until this present day. Perhaps the biggest achievement we should note for our discussion today, is that the New Deal reforms afforded a federal system of checks and balances on big business and labor relations, smoothing out some of the undesirable aspects of capitalism while bringing its own unique set of consequences.
As an aside, most of the political battles within American Christianity deal with these two different emphases: Christians who support the Republican party often do so because of its conservative, moral values; Christians who support the Democratic party often do so because of the social planks and its reputation for civil liberties. Frankly, looking at it from a purely historical perspective, the two parties have served as a further system of checks and balances, one picking up the pieces when the other had pushed the envelope too far, insuring that neither becomes overly extremist. Of course, this can pose its own set of limitations, but such a discussion is one you can read about in other places than Le Penseur Réfléchit. This author does not like to discuss politics of any sort, short of tracing their historic consequences or making an impersonal observation here and there that all would do well to hear and heed. There are, in my opinion, bigger fish to fry (as the proverb goes), and I prefer not to squabble over the “administration of Caesar.” Godspeed and good wishes to those who do; I do not. (What can I say? One body, many parts.)
FDR was not only the president during the bulk of the Great Depression, but he also was president when America entered the Second World War. His reforms were not enough to bring the economy back into full swing, or at the least, history did not give them enough time to realize their full potential, for now the War machine was geared up and ready to go to battle. We mentioned fascism a moment ago; it was not Mussolini that provoked the allies: it was another fascist leader by the name of Adolf Hitler, the infamous chancellor of Germany and founder of the Nazi party. Hitler posed the biggest threat of all the fascist leaders—we have already mentioned Mussolini of Italy and there was also Francisco Franco of Spain—for he was threatening European soil. Sick of war, France and Germany stood back and watched him move, practicing a policy called appeasement in which they attempted to pacify him and call him back through peaceful ends. When he attacked Poland in 1939 in direct defiance of treaty negotiations, France and Britain reciprocated. The United States remained neutral, though it was clear there was a strong favoritism shown to Britain, one of America’s long-standing allies.
In the meantime, Japan joined with Germany and Italy in 1940 forming the Axis Powers and began taking over territory controlled by the United States. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought the United States into the battle, ending their already weakening neutrality, for they had long been supporting the European troops in every way other than by direct combat. On April 12, 1945, FDR finally died in office after a long illness, leaving vice president Harry S. Truman in charge of the war. Left in the dark of many of the secret operations, it took Truman a little bit to gain his bearing, but once he gained his feet, he proved competent at his job, FDR’s giant shoes no little feat to fill. One such classified operation known as the Manhattan Project had successfully built the first atomic bomb, building on the general theory of relativity of well-known German-born U.S. physicist Albert Einstein, much to his horror. In fact, Einstein is on record as saying that the war that came after the Third World War would be fought with stones, for Truman decided to use this new technology against the Japanese after seeing so many Americans lose their lives to the fierce Japanese armies unafraid to fight to the death for the glory of their emperor. The first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, burning a four mile square hole in the ground and killing countless scores of Japanese instantly and claiming many more lives from the effects of its lingering radiation.
The Japanese were tenacious, however, and still clung to their war efforts, prompting Truman to drop a second bomb three days later—August 9th—on the city of Nagasaki. The Japanese fully surrendered on September 2, 1945, and the nightmare was ended. However, this War, unlike the First World War, caused a difference in perspective for the Western world. Disillusion had already occurred during the First World War, especially with the European allies. During the Second World War, however, fourteen million soldiers died—332 thousand of those Americans, 82 thousand more American soldiers badly injured—and many more civilian casualties were inflicted. The atomic bomb did more than blast four-mile craters on the Japanese islands: it blasted holes through humanism’s optimism of human potentiality. It wasn’t just the A-bomb: Hitler’s concentration camps in which millions of Jews died of starvation or were murdered in the gas chambers, their bodies piled layers deep and buried in shallow, mass burial gravesites left the world numb in disbelief. In fact, there are still those today who deny that this event ever happened, so atrocious does it seem.
C.S. Lewis campaigned on the British airwaves for a call to Christianity in a series of broadcasts in what has now been collected in the book Mere Christianity. But, as we noted before, Lewis was not the only thinker at work. Existentialism was the atheistic alternative, popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. We have already glossed its tenets here and in Flapper Girls and the Postmodern Revolution, but we should again mention that it believed in free will, noting that we all had choices to make, yet it saw the evil in the world as well and realized that the optimism of secular humanism was unrealistic. God may very well be dead, but this is no cause for joyous celebration. How do we deal with the world in which we live? The future looks rather bleak.
In any case, Russia held a shaky alliance with the European allies, fighting alongside Britain, France, and the United States. When the War ended, naturally Soviet leader Joseph Stalin believed he should have his share in the spoils, promoting communism in conquered countries. This expansionistic mentality caused the capitalistic European nations to balk, prompting some bitter opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1946, Stalin spoke to his Moscow audience of the strength of the Red Army and the superiority of communism, stating that capitalistic economies inevitably produced armed combat. The war of words was on.
One month later, British prime minister Sir Winston Churchill was traveling in the United States with president Harry Truman. At Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill made history when he announced: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” The response of America and Europe was to practice a policy that came to be known as containment, keeping the Russians on their side of the “Iron Curtain.” Thus, Eastern Europe was communistic, Western Europe capitalistic. This also prompted a second “Red Scare” in America, this one lasting for seven years instead of the single year of the first, and causing communism and socialism to become very unpopular. A number of Americans were cited on counts of communist association, including playwright Arthur Miller (1915– ), best known for his play Death of a Salesman. (Incidentally, his second wife was actress Marilyn Monroe, whom he married in 1956, the same year he was cited for contempt of Congress. The bitter marriage lasted until 1961 when the pair divorced. It was her third and final marriage after a second marriage to baseball player Joe DiMaggio: her marriage with Miller lasted the longest of the three. She had come a very long way from the nineteen-year-old propeller technician named Norma Jean Baker Dougherty—her first married name; she wed at age sixteen—who became a poster girl for the “Rosie the Riveter” ideal promoted during WWII when women manned the factories to produce war supplies for the men who were engaged in battle.)
Anti-communism was not the only thing that pitted the United States against the Soviet Union. There was also a technology race between the two, which will enter our discussion in a moment. However, we said we would discuss postmodernity’s birth and break from modernity and as usual, time draws us up short of the full treatment such a topic merits. Postmodernity corresponds to the shift from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. In both Europe and the United States, the 1950s saw an explosion in technology and information. The War was over and capitalism was booming like never before, the stored up money consumers wished to spend during the war years now seeing new outlets. The advent of the computer did much to further things in this regard. The first computer prototypes were built to break German codes during World War II. Most notable is British mathematician Alan Turing who served as a cryptographer for the British government, his machines breaking the German Enigma machine’s code. He played an integral role in the theoretical development of computer technology. (See University of Cambridge Tom Körner’s article Why Was The Computer Invented When It Was? for more.)
Such technology did not stay static, but continued to evolve, in part due to new discoveries in the fields of science and mathematics. According to Iowa State University’s Department of Computer Science:
The Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the world’s first electronic digital computer. It was built by John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry at Iowa State University during 1937–42. It incorporated several major innovations in computing including the use of binary arithmetic, regenerative memory, parallel processing, and separation of memory and computing functions. [As an interesting aside, the first “computer bug” was found in 1947: a moth in relay #70.]
Because of the explosion of information, communication between fields became much more difficult to organize. Further, it seemed that the notion of a common culture was under attack for there was no meta-narrative to join together the disparate parts, no master narrative that allows us to think about society as a single, coherent system. This tended to result in more experimental work or smaller, more narrowly focused truth claims. Each academic discipline could make respective claims about its area of expertise but was forced to abandon any concrete frameworks for fitting all the pieces together. The rumblings of an emerging postmodern age were being heard with increasing clarity as scientists in the Soviet Union and the United States began competing for the technological prize. In 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit earth; Americans responded the next year with the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to heighten technological achievement in military endeavors (Zakon). Such developments were the first baby steps in the development of a certain technology that would revolutionize the world and bring the Information Age to its pinnacle. What I am referring to, of course, is the history of the Internet.
Paralleling the change such an increase in technology brought, the thinking of social critics began to open up to a realization of new potentials and the inevitable complications such innovations bring. Among these early postmodern thinkers was French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998), an important pioneer in identifying, labeling, and shaping the inroads of possibilities and consequences such a cultural shift engendered. According to the Lyotard biography from The European Graduate School:
Lyotard’s book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979) is often said to represent the beginning of postmodern thought. [The first five chapters can be read online at the Marxists Internet Archive.] It was originally written as a report on knowledge for the Quebec government. Lyotard examines knowledge, science, and technology in advanced capitalist societies. Here, the very notion of society as a form of ‘unicity’ (as in national identity) is judged to be losing credibility. Society as unicity whether conceived as an organic whole (Durkheim), or as a functional system (Parsons), or again, as a fundamentally divided whole composed of two opposing classes (Marx)—is no longer credible in light of a growing ‘incredulity towards’ legitimating ‘metanarratives.’ Such metanarratives (for example: every society exists for the good of its members) provide a teleology [that is, a causal explanation] legitimating both the social bond and the role of science and knowledge in relation to it. A metanarrative, then, provides a ‘credible’ purpose for action, science, or society at large.
At a more technical level, a science is modern if it tries to legitimate its own rules through reference to a metanarrative—that is, a narrative outside its own sphere of competence. Two influential metanarratives are the idea that knowledge is produced for its own sake (this was typical of German idealism), and the idea that knowledge was produced for a people-subject in quest of emancipation. The proof is deemed to be universally valid because reality is deemed to be a universe (a totality) that can be represented, or expressed in symbolic form. However, even in physics no such universe exists which can be put fully into symbolic form. Rather, any statement that lays claim to universality can be quickly shown to be only part of the universe it claims to describe. Postmodernity implies that these goals of knowledge are now contested, and, furthermore, that no ultimate proof is available for settling disputes over these goals.
In effect, Lyotard was saying early on that a sense of a common truth or unity was disappearing from culture. Even if we say that the unity of a culture is made up only by the mutual dependency of persons who do not otherwise feel any sense of loyalty to one another as some sociologists do—even if we say that the culture consists of two warring factions that make up one whole as Marxian theory suggests—we still do not get the larger picture. When we say these things we are merely expressing metanarratives: that is, “big stories” that help us rationalize our actions, keeping the system propped up. Yet, Lyotard suggests, we now know that metanarratives are only that: metanarratives. The reason why we can make such a claim is because no person can know the totality of the universe; those academic disciplines that claim to know the answer are only parts of a larger whole.
It is tempting to read our current thought backward into Lyotard’s words. Resist that notion; recall that he was writing this before postmodernity was part of the common coinage. If you like, we are not merely reading the words of a social theorist, but of a prophet and pioneer as well. The biography goes on to state:
Later, with the publication of his essay “Answering the Question: What is Postmodernism?” in 1982, Lyotard addresses the debate about the Enlightenment and specifically Jurgen Habermas’ take on the Enlightenment project. Lyotard argues that all aspects of modern societies rely on ‘grand narratives,’ or a sort of meta-theory that searches to explain the belief system that exists. These metanarratives represent totalizing explanations of things like Christianity or Marxism—dominant modes of thought. For Lyotard, the Enlightenment project as promoted by Habermas constitutes another attempt at authoritative explanation. Thus, Lyotard bases his definition of Postmodernism on the idea that postmodernist thought questions, critiques, and deconstructs metanarratives by observing that the move to create order or unity always creates disorder as well. Instead of ‘grand narratives,’ which seek to explain all totalizing thought, Lyotard calls for a series of mini-narratives that are “provisional, contingent, temporary, and relative.” Lyotard, then, provides us with an argument for the postmodern breakdown or fragmentation of beliefs and values instead of Habermas’ proposal for a society unified under a ‘grand narrative.’
Since we have discussed this “grand narrative,” “master narrative,” “dominant ideology,” or “grand récit” in Love: The Master Narrative, the June 25, 2003, issue of Le Penseur Réfléchit, we will not go into further detail here. Suffice it to say, however, that Lyotard has tapped into postmodern thought, nailing its central doctrines down with alarming precision. There is, however, more to be said about postmodernity before we close. Earlier in this issue, we promised we would speak of the different styles of evangelism mentioned in last issue’s Flapper Girls and the Postmodern Revolution. Let’s begin by restating Loyal’s words that appeared at the end of the newsletter, in which he compares and contrasts two different models of evangelism:
Declarative Presuppositional Method:
- Approach the person with the Biblical truth of their sinful condition. Romans 3:23.
- Communicate to the nonbeliever the Biblical consequences of his or her sin. Romans 6:23a.
- Present the Scriptural premise for salvation through Christ. John 3:16.
- Offer the gift of salvation. Romans 6:23b.
- Encourage a decision for faith in Christ. Romans 10:10–13.
- If there is no acknowledgement of regeneration, break off the conversation. 1 Corinthians 1:18.
Schaeffer’s Presuppositional Method:
- Establish communication and common meanings.
- Dialog to discover the other person’s presuppositions.
- Carefully push the non-Christian’s presuppositions to their logical conclusion with an attitude of compassion.
- Using his or her inconsistencies, press the unbeliever to compare the logical conclusion of these beliefs in the real world, himself or herself and his or her actual conduct.
- Show that the Christian worldview is better equipped to allow living in the real world, thus suggesting that this worldview is true.
- Press the essential claims of the Gospel towards the unbeliever and call for repentance and faith.
Of these two methods, the second was determined to often be more effective and we mentioned that the basis for these newsletters revolves around a similar conception. An objection was raised on the discussion forum regarding these models, however: there was no disagreement in believing that the first model would not be very effective; the question came in regarding the effectiveness of the second model, suggesting it might be outdated as well:
As for Schaeffer’s method, it seems to me it is still rooted in a modernist mode of thinking. I find the postmodern seekers of faith are not too concerned about logical inconsistencies and incoherences. They are accustomed to living in a pluralistic and relativistic age, hence logical inconsistencies and apparent contradictions do not really bother them. I suppose that’s why the Eastern religions (which have no emphasis on reason) are gaining in popularity.
To minister to the postmodern generation, I think we must adapt these methods by considering the importance of the role of community.
I would not deny that Schaeffer lived more on the threshold of the postmodern era rather than in it. Dr. Francis Schaeffer (1912–1984) was alive and well during a time when existentialism was the prevailing philosophy emerging from university campuses, and it is the campuses where the social climate is first set before it filters down to the general populace. We have spent considerable time discussing the fact that existentialism was very honest and very stark, coming into prominence on the heels of World War II. When we consider that modernism is the umbrella that encompasses both secular humanism and existentialism, it becomes apparent that existentialism was more the dominant ideology of Dr. Schaeffer’s day. So when we say that Scaheffer’s method is “still rooted in a modernist mode of thinking,” we are largely referring to his combat of existentialism, the backlash against the idealistic optimism in human potentiality triumphed by the humanism of Enlightenment thinkers. Yet I am not so sure that existentialism is dead yet, or simply reabsorbed into postmodernity. The biggest difference is that with existentialism, nothing exists outside the universe. With the more hopeful postmodernism, something might exist outside the universe, we simply have no way of knowing if it does or does not. Bob Hostetler has this advice to offer the Christian interested in postmodern evangelism:
Engage in dialogue, not monologue. Contrary to popular belief, “Postmoderns are not won by emotion,” says Ferguson. “They are attracted to reason and rational thinking.” They will not be persuaded by argumentation, however, but by dialogue. “Most of us,” Kline adds, “learned to ‘do evangelism’ as a monologue: we share a presentation and ask the listener to pray a prayer. But in every friendship I have with a non-Christian, I entered that relationship mostly as a listener. We have got to become better listeners—compassionate, sincere listeners, not listeners who are only listening for a weakness in the other person’s worldview.” (PM Guide)
While I understand well the objection raised to Schaeffer’s methodology, I would add one further comment before I close. We must be careful in our analysis of the culture to differentiate between what is and what ought to be. Put another way, the sea of relativity we can clearly see in the culture of the day creates a vacuum where people are hungry for something other than just another “master narrative.” Just like the existentialist, they are searching for authenticity and for a solution that offers results. I think that we need to study the culture to understand what methods of evangelism will be most effective. However, we should also realize that if we merely mimic the culture’s ways, we will be no different than it is and there will be nothing we have that will appeal to it. Somehow, we must engage our culture in a way that speaks to it while offering something real and something true that exists quite apart from its usual mentality. Our culture is weary and fatigued, yet it still hungers for the spiritual—among the reasons why Eastern mysticism blends well with the postmodern mindset—for God has set eternity in the hearts of all men.
Schaeffer first suggests: “Establish communication and common meanings. Dialog to discover the other person’s presuppositions.” Both of these involve entering into a relationship with other people and establishing common ground, advice that seems to me timeless no matter what the cultural climate might cook up. The human heart has an emotional need to bond with others no trend will ever supplant. Perhaps the biggest question involves his idea that we should carefully and compassionately push the other person toward the logical inconsistencies of his or her beliefs, believing that our postmodern culture has no interest in logic or truth. I would agree that times have changed somewhat, but I think it largely depends on how you go about such an effort: dialog (as both Schaeffer and Hostetler suggest), not monologue. If you can (a) demonstrate the logical inconsistencies of the other in a way that is not threatening to that person’s self-identity or sense of worth and (b) demonstrate a better way that is more logically consistent, I think most people will be eager to hear you out. The postmodern culture has left its members cut adrift in a sea of relativity, leaving their lives without meaning and without any way to measure truth. Many simply do not know there is another way and they must be shown: gently, as one might lead a child, yet not patronizingly as such a description might suggest. Really, not that much has changed from the existentialism of Schaeffer’s day to its hybrid offspring seen in our postmodern world. His was not the monologue most have come to detest and he had a sincere passion for persons, something the earlier mentality seemed to overlook.
Finally, Schaeffer suggests that we “press the essential claims of the Gospel towards the unbeliever and call for repentance and faith.” Maybe a believer shouldn’t “press” the Gospel toward a non-believer as the choice of words here indicates; the one thing Schaeffer was most noted for was the respect he gave to the other person and the way he would truly listen to him or her. He often said of himself that he spent the bulk of his time listening and only a few moments in offering any kind of reply. There may be elements of his method that do need to be modified, particularly on a person to person basis. But certainly, I think we would do well to listen to him when he suggests we spend the bulk of our time listening to others. There is, of course, always more to be said, but for now I will sign off another necessarily incomplete newsletter.
God bless,
Eric
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