Lesson Ten: Postmodernism and the Church

A gradual shift became evident in the era after the 1960s in how people understand the nature of truth. After the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution, people believed that truth could be found through rigorous rational thinking and proper application of the scientific method studying the natural world. Humanity would move out of the dark ages of religion, superstition, and irrationalism. And with scientific progress and philosophical skepticism of religious claims, many believed that knowledge and technology would push humanity forward. Christianity would either adapt to modernism and adopt its insights, or it would perish. But just as modernism seemed to be yielding its fruit, the technology from two world wars shattered people’s belief in the claim of progress to a utopia. Postmodernism is a movement that denies the central tenets of modernism and tells us that all truth is relative. Many Christians welcomed this new challenge to modernism’s challenge to Christianity. But where modernism attacked Christianity with frontal assaults, postmodernism seeks to undermine Christianity’s claim to universal truth. Everyone was now entitled to their own private truths. In this class, we will discuss the fundamental elements of postmodernism and its challenges to Christianity.