Tag Archives: Christianity

Post-Christianity or Postmodern Forgetfulness?

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From the (scholarly?) Wikipedia:

Postchristianity is the decline of Christianity, particularly in Europe, Canada and Australia, in the 20th and 21st centuries, considered in terms of postmodernism. It may include personal world views, ideologies, religious movements or societies that are no longer rooted in the language and assumptions of Christianity, at least explicitly, though it had previously been in an environment of ubiquitous Christianity (i.e., Christendom).

For nearly two thousand years, the dominant thought in the Western World has been Christianity. Christianity made sense of a world that the earlier Greek philosophers had tried to describe. Christianity took the stagnating Greek cosmology and natural philosophy and brought it into an era of enlightenment on the basis of God’s continuity and order.

Christianity provided the way forward for philosophy, art, and theology. It gave birth to science, the empirical study of a natural world assumed to be ordered on the basis of the order of God. Christianity provided security, morality, ethics, and more.

And in the past 112 years, we’ve somehow developed societies “no longer rooted” in it? I find that very difficult to believe. It is the same difficulty with which I could see a 90 year old man suddenly forgetting his past by choice in order to embrace a totally different reality for the last 10 years of his life. Whereas the elder may simply be senile, the society is simply ignorant. Forgetful perhaps. After all, we have more important things to worry about here in sophisticated 21st Century Western Civilization. Things like Science™. iPods are Science™. Dawkins is Science™. Contradictory statistical studies for medicine are Science™. Christianity though? Not Science™. Not if you want to fit in, anyway. But we’re not about fitting in here; we’re about historical accuracy, and Postmodernism is a great way to get a society to swap the two goals.

From a blog I frequent:

“The dominant philosophy of the modern age is a deconstruction of, or, to be blunt, a hatred of love of truth. Modern ethics is relativism, the denial that ethics exists; modern aesthetics is subjectivity, the denial that beauty exists; modern logic is polylogism, the denial the man of different races, classes and backgrounds can reason together; modern ontology is materialism, the denial that thoughts (including thoughts about ontology) exist; modern epistemology is empiricism (a theory which by definition can enjoy no empirical support); modern metaphysics is nihilism, the belief that the truth is a formless void on which the human will writes whatever it wills. Modernism hence denies and deconstructs philosophy at every point. And modern theology is a muddy atheism lacking even the fire and dignity of Nietzsche or Celsus.”

Perhaps “Postchristian” is simply a way to distinguish those who are not interested in history.

Bible Ignorance in America

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A recent survey indicates that a large percentage of America find the Bible to be a valuable resource, while a majority of the nation is ignorant as to what the Bible actually says.

There is a lot of speculation about both the current role and the appropriate role of the Bible in America. But each year, American Bible Society puts the guessing aside and asks a sampling of Americans to tell us how they view and use the Bible and what they believe its role should be in America.  Recently, American Bible Society released this year’s results from that research in the 2012 State of the Bible report.

The State of the Bible in America in 2012 can be summed up in a two words: encouraging and unsettling.

The research, commissioned by American Bible Society and conducted by Barna Research, found that the majority of Americans (69%) believe the Bible provides answers on how to live a meaningful life. But while 79% believe they are knowledgeable about the Bible, 54% were unable to correctly identify the first five books of the Bible.  And approximately half of Americans surveyed didn’t know the fundamental differences between the teachings of the Bible, Koran and Book of Mormon, with 46% percent saying they believe all three books teach the same spiritual truths.

The State of the Bible in America in 2012 can be summed up in a two words: encouraging and unsettling.

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While nearly half of Americans (47%) believe the Bible has too little influence in society—a far cry from the anti-faith picture often painted in culture—approximately half (46%) say they read the Bible no more than once or twice a year.

What The State of the Bible report also confirmed is that the lack of engagement with the Bible among Americans isn’t caused by a lack of access to it. Here in the United States, 85% of households own a Bible. Actually, most families own more than one, with a household average of 4.3 Bibles.

Looking more closely at the data, something really interesting emerges. When we examine responses to the question “Do you believe the Bible contains everything a person needs to live a meaningful life?”, we find that older respondents agreed at a much higher rate than did younger respondents. While 61% of those surveyed between ages 18-27 agreed, those 47 years and older agreed at a rate of 75%.

Before you assert that older people are just naturally more traditional, remember that the older group is made up of the Woodstock generation, free-love ‘70s kids and the MTV generation. The data seems to say that the older you are, the more likely you are to value the Bible. Maybe it’s that our own life experiences prove the value of the Bible’s wisdom?

 

If the culture values the Bible as much as the survey shows, one would imagine it would spend more time reading it. But perhaps this disconnect is common among Christians; I know I find myself spending less time reading than I ought.

That the older generations value the Bible more than the younger should be no surprise. It seems that the older people get, the more they are interested in sources of information and truth that did not originate in their lifetimes whereas younger generations seek popular and current sources. Perhaps the additional life experience has something to do with it as well. Having more time to test their worldview, perhaps their worldview has had time to grow.

Full text of the article is here.