To further understand the context of postmodern influence on Christian thought consider these periods of thought. Primitive Christianity (1st Century) had a focus on mystery, community, and symbol. These were the foundational elements of this new group of believers. The Common Era (100-600) began the classical period of the church, but the focus was still on mystery, community, and symbol. During the Medieval (600-1500) period that came with the formation of the Roman system of Church under the leadership of Constantine, Catholicism was birthed and the institutional church was organized. Reformation (1500-1750) brought Protestantism. This began to be not just a sect in Christianity, but reformed all areas of the faith including the Catholic Church. The focus here became the Word of God. Authority of Scripture and its use as a tool for all people was the message. The Modern Era (1750-1980) brought denominations. This became not just a way for people to find a form which fit them and their relationship to God, but denominations became a means of analysis, reason, and individualism. Ultimately, the Modern Era caved in on itself. It attempted to bring people into the church through the arguments of reason, but this eventually drove people away as the church became more fundamental. Postmodern (1980- ) is the stage we are currently operating within. It has been a return to mystery, community, and symbol. Furthermore, there are three technological revolutions that radically affected the modern church and now the postmodern church. The Agricultural Revolution led to the formation of towns as people grouped together for trade and protection. The Industrial Revolution led to innovations that urbanized people. Production was the goal. Now the Cybernetic Revolution has brought exponential growth through efficient calculations.
To understand how postmodernism became postmodernism, let’s look at its short history. In 1870, John Watkins Chapman referred to his art is as post-Impressionism. In 1917, German writer Rudolph Panwitz referred to what we now call postmodernism as a nihilistic approach to rejecting European civilization. In 1940, Einstein embraces many postmodern approaches to science and philosophy. In the 1960s, pop art and the sexual revolution kick the movement into overdrive. Even in the church, the nationalistic approach to church growth was being challenged by ethicists such as Richard Neibuhr. To understanding postmodernism the first thing you need to know is postmodernism can’t completely be defined yet. It is still too early to know exactly what it all means. More importantly, to define it completely would be a modern need. For the sake of understanding it, however, it is a rejection of modernity. There are some defining characteristics of modernity and post-modernity. Modernity has its history and identity starting with the introduction of the printing press. Earlier than that though, Copernicus asserts the Earth is not the center of the universe. This was the birth of modern science with Galileo and Newton following as major leaders. The development of large ships for exploration also helped define modernity as well as market capitalism replacing feudalism. Modern guns and infantry also defined the modern world as they were new resources for conquest and control. For Christians, the Protestant Reformation was our modern equivalent for understanding our faith as we shifted to valuing rational thought above mystery and symbol.
For post-modernity, mass media, multiculturalism, post Einsteinian theories (quantum mechanics, expanding universe), contemporary philosophies that challenge the elite’s, air travel, e-commerce, new military technology, and a decline in institutionalism has shaped its identity. There are other defining characteristics of postmodernism such as no central reality, arena of dueling ideas, knowledge that is not inherently good, cooperation over conquest, truth not being limited to rational assumptions, knowledge being subjective because the world is relational, reality as relative, time not necessarily being linear, a community based understanding of good, an end to a single-minded world-view, deconstruction, and post-structuralism (or the synthesis of various areas of study in forming theory and beliefs). Language must be functional in postmodern theory and language must produce meaning rather than reflect meaning. This is significant for believers. The Christian who is heavily influenced by postmodernism seeks to find those elements within postmodernism which are beneficial to the Kingdom of God and deals with destructive elements of postmodernism in a way which are Kingdom building.
There has also been a significant change in the nature of self. In the pre-modern world, identity is social stability. In the modern world, and for the first time, personal identity could be in crisis due to wider range of social roles and possibilities, the availability of choosing our identities, and the need for achievement. This all led to an anxiety about fragile or false identity. In the postmodern world, opportunities change all the time. The acceptance of not having one stable identity is accepted and true self is without substance and superficial meaning is embraced. This is problematic because it leads to a nihilistic approach to identity. This is an incredibly important aspect of the paradigm shift that reflects how little emerging is actually happening in the current church. Identity development for believers should be firmly rooted in Christ. We are, above all else, His. The Kingdom is a loosely defined sociological idea where Christians are able to see a critical element of their identity within the social setting. This promoted a Kingdom perspective which when coupled with a single identity source made identity development for the supporting local church easy to nurture. With the advent of modernity the individual identity is challenged as new sources are introduced. The supporting local church should have assisted people with incorporating new sources of identity into the previous paradigm, but typically used a dogmatic approach to simply assert the original paradigm. This only lead to greater sense of identity crisis as now the individual had to deal with the guilt associated with identity development. In the postmodern world culture is embracing an ever-more loosely defined idea about what an identity actually means. The church responded to the multiple identities that people were beginning to embrace in the postmodern world in a way that would have been very appropriate in the modern world. They try to help people incorporate multiple sources under the same pre-modern concept. This would have a perfect ministry during modernity, but under post-modernity it is a muddied approach that is most often presented as how to be a church-goer in the post-modern world. The need for direction for having multiple identities is nowhere in the current institution.
There have been six super-trends of the Great Transformation (All information here is given from “Futuring” by Edward Cornish). The first is technological progress, “All improvements being made in computers, medicine, transportation, and other technologies, as well as all the other useful knowledge that enables humans to achieve their purposes more effectively.” The next is economic growth. The Gross Domestic Product increased from $695 billion in the 19th century to $28 trillion in 1992. From 1500 to 1820 the per person average income went from $565 to $651 relative to 1990 standards (an increase of only 27 cents per year). From 1820 till 1994 the increase was $26 per year. The third is health care improvement. Due to more food, effective sanitation, better health services, and so on, the population has grown from 1 billion to about 6 billion in the past 50 years leading to population growth and longevity. The forth is increased mobility. People, goods, and information move from place to place faster and in greater quantity than ever before. The fifth is environmental decline. This includes the high use and disposal of petroleum and other natural materials and minerals, freshwater supplies, farming land, over-fished oceans, extinction of wildlife, and possibly global warming. And finally, increased deculturalization, or the loss of culture due to altered circumstances, has changed the world. The number of global languages is expected to dwindle from 6,000 to 3,000 by the end of the 21st century.
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