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Facing the Challenge

Postmodernity in Europe

This article was first presented at the Seedbed conference on 'Innovative Approaches to Mission in Post-Modern Western Europe', Mundaka, Spain, 16-20 June 2003, by David Couchman. It looks briefly at what postmodernity is, at whether Europe is a postmodern continent, at why the question is important, and at postmodernity as a context for the Gospel.

1. What is postmodernity?

Postmodernity, or postmodernism, is notoriously difficult to define. Some people focus on the social state or condition ('postmodernity'). Others focus on the philosophical view ('postmodernism'). Some even define it by a school of architecture. I would like to try to define it in terms not of social conditions (although it includes some of those), nor of a philosophical view (although it includes that too), but as a mind-set. Particularly, it is a mind-set about truth.

a. A mindset about truth

Jean-Francois Lyotard, the guru of postmodernism, says that contemporary people are characterized by an

incredulity towards metanarratives.

A metanarrative can be seen as a worldview, a grand story, a big-picture explanation of everything. Today, people are suspicious of claims to know the truth. In fact, truth is personal and subjective, rather than external or objective. The feminist theoretician Dale Spender says that

truth is what we invent, not what we discover.

A recent CD by the Manic Street Preachers was called 'This is my Truth, Tell me yours' - because what's true for me need not be true for you too. So postmodernity is first of all a mindset about truth.

b. The supremacy of personal choice

Related to this mindset about truth there is today the discounting of all authorities, cynicism about all institutions (whether church, government, law, police, or the education system), and the supremacy of personal choice. The first place we see this supremacy is in the area of consumerism: in the past people defined themselves by the work they did. Today we define ourselves by what we buy. It has been said:

I shop, therefore I am.

Shopping has been called the 'primary cultural pursuit' of our times. But people have always needed to buy things. What is different about today? Surely it is the way personal choice has become supreme to us.

But the supremacy of personal choice is not limited to consumerism. It also extends to moral issues: in the past, everyone shared the same standards of right and wrong, even if they did not believe in God. This is not true any more. Today I choose what is right for me. If I choose to sleep with my girlfriend, that is up to me. It is my choice, and you do not have any right to an opinion about it. So people say things like

If it feels so right, how can it be wrong?

Or:

There are no rules, are there? If you think it's right, do it.

A student union leaflet giving advice on 'safe sex' says

sleep with whoever you want, whenever you want - but do it carefully.[i]

So we have a mindset about truth, and the supremacy of personal choice. There are several other key characteristics of postmodernity, such as:

• tribalism
• tolerance
• the 'decentered self' - the idea that I can re-invent myself in different situations
• the huge importance of 'spirituality', whatever this means

There is not the time to go into all of these now, but there are two further key characteristics of postmodernity that we cannot afford to ignore:

c. The pervasive influence of the mass media

The mass media create the world we live in. In Britain, we watch television for three hours a day, on average. [ii] Over a lifetime, that means we spend nine years in front of the television. The critic Kenneth Myers says that television is:

...the single most significant shared reality of our entire society. In television we live and move and have our being.[iii]

The writer Douglas Rushkoff calls it 'the mediascape' - because the environment we live in is no longer a naturally formed landscape. Instead, it is artificially formed by the mass media.

d. The 'privatization' of Christian faith

Then finally, there is, in postmodernity, the 'privatization' of Christian faith. It has been said that there is a distinction between public truth and private truth. The world of public truth is the world of science and business, law and education. It is a world that we all share - a world of 'facts'. However, when it comes to vital questions such as whether there's a God, life after death, or right and wrong, these belong to the world of private truth - of 'beliefs', 'opinions', and 'values', not facts. As a result, the Good News of Jesus Christ has been privatized. 'If Christianity works for you...' we are told, '... that's fine - for you. But don't push it down my throat. It isn't for me.'

With this privatization, the church has become irrelevant to many people. A survey by Scripture Union found that only one in a hundred children aged between seven and eleven connected the millennium with Jesus Christ. Nine times as many connected it with the Robbie Williams hit song 'Millennium' and sixteen times as many connected it with the Millennium Dome. According to cable television channel MTV five times as many children have experimented with a ouija board as have been inside any kind of church. Four times as many have visited a spiritualist medium. The Church has become massively irrelevant to the lives of many young people.

To sum up, I have tried to sketch an outline of postmodernity in terms of

• a mindset about truth
• the supremacy of personal choice
• the pervasive influence of the mass media
• the privatization of faith

Is Europe a postmodern continent?

We would not be here if we did not believe that the answer to this question is a resounding 'yes'. I hope that my sketch of postmodernity has been enough for you to recognize the characteristics of the society in which you operate, the people you work with - even though most of my examples are taken from the UK.

However, I would like to make three observations, which I believe are important:

1. Postmodernity in America takes a different form from postmodernity in Europe. Although the broad brush strokes are similar, the specific details change. This means that we cannot just import American resources wholesale into Europe. There are some very good American resources for responding to postmodernity, but they all need to be enculturated for a European setting.
2. Postmodernity in continental Europe is different from postmodernity in the UK. Again, the broad brush strokes are similar, but the specific details change. So when someone started taking our 'Facing The Challenge' course for use in the French-speaking world, they talked in terms of an adaptation, not just a translation - and we were very happy for that.
3. I believe - although I cannot yet prove - that postmodernity takes different forms within continental Europe - especially between northern Europe (with its Protestant heritage) and southern Europe (with its long Catholic tradition), and also between Western Europe and the former Soviet bloc countries - although this distinction is rapidly disappearing down the historical tracks.

So is Europe a postmodern continent? Yes it is, but we need to be wary of generalizations: Postmodernity in Europe is different from postmodernity in America; postmodernity in continental Europe is different from postmodernity in the UK, and postmodernity takes different forms in different places across Europe. (Read more about this...)

Why does it matter?

This is not just the latest fad. It is not something that will go away. In an email to me before this conference, Peter said:

My own conviction is that the shift from modernity to postmodernity is probably the single most important factor we who share Christ in this continent need to get to grips with.

I believe he is absolutely right. This is the biggest cultural change the church has faced, not just in thirty years, but in three or four centuries, since the Enlightenment. Because of this cultural change, we need to see our task in the Church as a cross-cultural task - not just for missionaries in distant jungles, but for missionaries in western European cities too. We need to equip ordinary church members to see themselves as cross-cultural missionaries. I do not think we are doing this yet.

And finally...

Postmodernity as a context for the Gospel

People sometimes say to me that my description of postmodern culture is very negative. But I am not saying any of this in a negative, judgmental kind of way. The question whether these are positive or negative developments seems to me to be a largely irrelevant one. They just are the cultural context in which we are called to minister. Our job is to understand that culture, and to learn how to minister effectively within it, and to find points of contact with it.

How, then, should we respond? Three suggestions, which are intended to provoke thought and discussion rather than to be definitive:

1. What methods will work today?

So often we are dogmatically determined to stick to methods that worked in the 1950s, and this is coupled with a growing vagueness about doctrine. This needs to be reversed: we need to be strong on our doctrinal foundations, and vastly more flexible in our methods. We need to be willing to experiment, and to let go of things that prove ineffective or prove to be stumbling blocks.

We may be looking for a 'holy grail' of evangelistic method, but there is no answer! There is no one method that will solve our problems. Rather we need to cultivate an attitude that is innovative and flexible. Even if we come up with some answers here that we think are innovative, in a year's time, they may be out of date and inappropriate. We must be constantly willing to change.

2. The importance of style

Style is very important in the postmodern world. In a world where people challenge authority claims, dogmatic one-directional communication just does not 'cut it' any more. We have to develop styles of communication that are open to question and challenge, and that allow for thought and disagreement.

I was recently talking to someone who is responsible for training young missionaries in one of the largest missionary organizations in the world. He is a man in his fifties, training people in their twenties in cross-cultural communication. But there is a huge cultural gap between him and his trainees! When he says 'This is how we do it in our organization; this is the rule we have' - in the past, the trainees would have meekly accepted this. But today, their response is 'Why?' 'So what?' 'Don't you trust us?' And as well as training them in cross-cultural communication, he has to work much harder at cross-cultural communication with them!

In my home church over recent years, we have introduced an event for people who are not followers of Christ, where they come and have a meal, and there is a (very short) opening talk, and then a time of group discussion. The principle is that there is nothing 'off-limits'. There is no question you cannot ask. There is no opinion you cannot express. It is very scary! But this kind of communication is essential for people today.

So we need to develop styles that allow for questioning and dialogue.

3. The importance of apologetics.

I believe that in postmodernity, apologetics is going to have a much more important role than it has had in the past:

We often teach that everyone is supposed to be an evangelist, but only a few gifted specialists are supposed to be able to defend the truth of the Bible's message - perhaps people like Francis Schaeffer, or C S Lewis. The Bible reverses this. It indicates that being an evangelist is a spiritual gift that only some people have.[iv] But it tells all of us to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have.[v] We should all be able to explain - at an appropriate level - why we believe the Good News of Jesus Christ is true.

In a world where people doubt all truth claims, we need to be able to show convincingly why we believe the Bible's message is true.

Questions

1. How far does the description here match our context(s)?
2. How does the local context vary? For example between Northern Europe and Southern Europe, or between urban and rural areas?
3. 'We need flexibility of method combined with faithfulness of doctrine.' Do you agree or disagree? Why?
4. We need to be open to question. How might this work out in practice?
5. Do you agree or disagree with the statement about the importance of apologetics? Why?

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