Jump directly to the Content

The Riddle of Our Postmodern Culture

Books trendmeisters, speakers on the pastoral circuit-all proclaim, prophetlike, "The culture we minister in has changed. We live in a postmodern world."

Uh, what's a postmodern world? Is that where people read Wired, drink double cappuccinos, and buy alternative rocker Alanis Morissette's hot-selling CD?

Postmodernism is a throw-away word that means everything and nothing. J. I. Packer, theologian at Regent College says, "Postmodernism is a word that has never secured a dictionary definition. Different people use it in different ways."

Postmodernism is, in short, a hackneyed word ill need of definition.

Mother of all negation


I fondly recall a silver-haired woman in a church I served. She never met a new idea she liked. She criticized everything, was never for anything. Her contribution (if that's what you call it) was negation.

She shares much in common with postmodernism, which is a reaction against something. It's the mother of all negation. Postmodernism, a phenomenon of Western ...

March
Support Our Work

Subscribe to CT for less than $4.25/month

Homepage Subscription Panel

Read These Next

Related
SURVIVING THE SENIOR PASTOR'S DEPARTURE
SURVIVING THE SENIOR PASTOR'S DEPARTURE
From the Magazine
Empty Streets to the Empty Grave
Empty Streets to the Empty Grave
While reporting in Israel, photographer Michael Winters captures an unusually vacant experience at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
Editor's Pick
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
Understanding God and our world needs more than bare reason and experience.
close