Post-Modern, Post-Christian, Post-Truth

Good morning everyone!

This morning I’d like to look at the cultural moment we are living right now as a
community and the idea is to think through about how to face challenges that are not
always recognized and dealt with, largely due to either our own inability or
unwillingness to engage the cultural moment.

I will proceed briefly in three part. First, we will look at what we mean by postmodern.
Second, we will analyze the term post-christian, and finally the concept of post-truth.

Postmodern

In the ancient world the modern divide between religious and secular was basically
non-existent and if we could redeem that idea, I believe, it would be of great benefit for
the future growth of our community, despite the outlook that has always been predicting
the demise of religion and that never comes.

Thinking about the religious and secular, there are two extremes to be avoided, though.

One extreme believes that the very secularization is inherent to Christianity and
especially to its Protestant forms, and therefore, taken to its extreme, the modern concept
of religion should stop existing altogether because it is made manifest in the world in the
secular sphere. At least, that’s where, on the this interpretation the movement of history
is headed and the coming of Christ, the human being that reveals God. The kenosis (the
self-emptying) of Christ (based on the hymn found in Philippians 2), means the death of
God. Ultimately, God emptied himself into the world, died on the Cross and left us with
the secular, with the human alone.

And the other extreme believes that in order to make God’s rule possible, Christians
should engage in propagating their views in as many areas of human life as possible and
if given the chance, even take the governing positions to do “God’s will here on earth as
it is done in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) and by so doing reverse the clock and go back to
the Constantinian times when Christians ruled the world and imposed their morality and
worldview on everybody.

Those of you who are well-versed in contemporary theology might have recognized
behind these descriptions the Death of God theology, represented by thinkers such as
Thomas Altizer and Paul Van Buren, popular especially in the 1960’s now largely
represented by what is called Radical Theology. The other description would broadly
correspond with evangelical camp, that have allied themselves with some politicians
whom they see as divinely appointed and instrumental in bringing God’s kingdom to
earth. Those who were labeled Power Worshippers in a recent book by Katherine
Stewart.

Now, why do I speak about these two extremes? Well, as Aristotle discovered long time
ago, most of the time, the right mean is found somewhere in the middle, between two
extremes that we want to avoid. This is obviously a gross simplification of Aristotle’s
thinking since he never says that in each and every situation, the right course of action is
going to be right between the two extremes. At times we may lean toward one or the
other extreme, in order to determine what is right and good.

We definitely do not want to give our allegiance to something that is not God, which is
especially difficult in our relationship with money – remember Jesus’ words:

“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be
devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24
NAB)

The two, our public life and our religious life must be held together, often in tension
with so many desires and duties that are imposed on us, either from within or from
without. But it is in that tension that fruitful solutions and applications of our faith to
everyday situations may arise.

This also convinces me that the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, is precisely the
place from which we can inaugurate our witness to the wider society, not in order to be
relevant again. Now we have never been relevant as Christadelphians, and that’s fine,
worldly relevance is definitely not something we should seek after as Jesus warns us in
Matthew 16:26 about gaining the world and losing our life.

But as ecclesias, and I prefer to point this communal aspect of the task, since that is the
original context of Jesus’ audience, who thought about themselves as much more
connected to their communities than we normally do, we have been given a task by
Jesus and later furthered through the mission of Paul and his letter writing - to become a
community of character (a phrase used by New Testament scholar Luke Timothy
Johnson) and a community of witness (not used in this perhaps describing the thinking
of American theologian Stanley Hauerwas).

Character and witness interplay and both form the bedrock of Christianity. From where
I stand these could move many people beyond the old divide between faith and works.
One is useless without the other. Having only character but no witness is useless. Having
only witness but no character is equally pointless. You need both the inward (or
character) formation of faith by being “conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29
NAB) and the outward (witness) aspect of faith where, hopefully the two will interact:
“if one of you says to them, "Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well," but you do not give
them the necessities of the body, what good is it?” (Jas. 2:16 NAB).

Hauerwas makes the point that while before Constantine (the pre-Christendom era), it
was a courageous act to be a Christian, after Constantine (the Christendom era), it was a
courageous act not to be a Christian. And of course this caused a lot of problems, and
both character and witness have been largely forgotten. He is not the first to make the
point. We trace our theology back to the early Anabaptists, who bravely faced
persecution from both Catholics and the Magisterial Protestants (Lutherans and
Reformed) and in more recent days, we can look at thinkers such as Danish philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard. His assessment of the cultural situation of his day goes like this:

“When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to preach. Among
“Christian nations,” however, the situation is different. What we have before us is not
Christianity but a prodigious illusion, the people are not pagans but live in the blissful
conceit that they are Christians. So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced,
first of all the illusion must be debunked. But since this vain conceit, this illusion, is to
the effect that we are all Christians, it looks indeed as if introducing Christianity
amounts to taking Christianity away. Nevertheless this is precisely what must be done,
for the illusion must go.” 1

How much different is that from our society? Not as much as polls might suggest at first
sight. While people participate less in church services these days, whenever people feel a
threat to their culture coming from outside, supposedly Christian values are quickly
invoked. So for example, even in the Czech Republic – one of the least christian and
most atheistic European country – Christian values were mentioned fairly often when
dealing with the refugees from the Middle East in 2015. For most people, however, their
Christianity, is merely nominal and not personal and public.

It has always been my firm belief that one chooses and decides freely to follow the call
of Jesus. We are living in a society that now placed us in a position where we can face
the society and its claim on us, in all spheres of life and give our faithfulness to the one
and only God of the Galilean prophet called Jesus and so reconstruct our public theology
and public witness.

The postmodern turn obviously challenges the claims of modernity. Its critique falls
under 5 categories:

1 Kierkegaard, Søren, and Charles E. Moore. Provocations: Spiritual Writings. (Walden, NY: Plough Publishing House,
2014), 402