Lausanne World Pulse – What Postmodernism Means for Evangelism
By Paul Mumo Kisau
Introduction
The mention of the word “postmodernism” evokes the notion of pluralism, where anything goes, since the concept of truth becomes relative. This then poses a real challenge to the Christian “one-way” method of salvation, where the Bible clearly provides evidence of Jesus asserting, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes [to God] to the father, except through me” (John 14:6). Later on, the Apostle Peter echoes these words without apology: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). These absolutes of the Christian message suffered in the advent of modernistic worldview and now suffer more from postmodernism. The question that begs an answer is: What does postmodernism mean for evangelism today? We must begin our discussion with a historical survey that will trace the winding path through which postmodernism has come to us. This will then lead to the question of evangelism in a postmodern world.
Premodernism
This worldview dominated the medieval times until the 1798 French Revolution. In this worldview, the “Western world” believed in the supernatural. The existence of God was taken for granted and the spirit world was taken as a fact. The spiritual world, which existed beyond the five senses, controlled the happenings of the physical world. Biblical Christianity was readily accepted during this premodern era. Church dogma was also readily accepted and evangelism came in the form of proclamation (cf. 1 John 1:3, 5). People were expected to believe the truth of the Bible without question.
Modernism
Premodern era values began to be undermined by the advent of the first Renaissance followed by the Reformation. The real threat to premodernism was, however, the Enlightenment era. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, philosophers like René Descartes and Immanuel Kant began to question the source of authority. What had been taken for granted as the source of authority—Church and the scriptures—was put to the test. The philosophers sought to free humanity from the bondage of superstition and bring them to the land of religious freedom. In this land, rational inquiry, empirical evidence and scientific discovery were of cardinal importance. The tables of religion were overturned and in their place human reasoning was enthroned. Some found it easier to become deists and to think of God as one who created the world and the universe and then walked away. Here God could exist and be worshipped, but human reasoning was still the final authority.
The question that begs an answer is: What does postmodernism mean for evangelism today?
Modernity, however, came crumbling down after humanity’s reason and discovery brought with it the two very deadly world wars of 1914-1919 and 1939-1945. Many people perished and many more were displaced. Human reasoning had failed to bring the desired success that was propagated by its proponents. The death nail came down at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 (so it is argued) since Marxism had tried to put into action the tenets of the Enlightenment.
Postmodernism
With the demise of modernism, a new worldview was born. Postmodernism takes its name from modernism and supposes its death by the prefix “post.” According to Gary Gilley, “If the optimistic projections of the last two hundred years of the best efforts of reason, science and technology has failed; and if the tenets of premodernism with its foundation of revelatory truth is preposterous, then all that is left is the pessimism of nothingness, emptiness and uncertainty.”1