Douglas Groothuis doesn’t like TV and we shouldn’t either. He concludes his critique of postmodernism with an engaging appendix entitled “Television: Agent of Truth Decay”. I agree with Groothuis that TV is a medium that exemplifies postmodern values and that the growth of video strengthens postmodernism’s grip on our culture, even as most viewers never contemplate the implications of the form of media they are choosing. Thus, in my sanctity, I have not yet bought a big, new, high-definition, flat-screen television; though I think they are very cool. But I do have an iPod. It has a 30 gigabyte hard drive that I have not come anywhere close to filling with media yet. And yes, it even plays videos, which I confess to watching regularly on that itty-bitty screen. Inconsistency, that trademark of the postmodern worldview, has found its way into my life too. I’m a podcast junkie. But at least I don’t watch that much TV.
Every day I download a podcast of BBC Radio 4’s ten-past-eight interview from the Today program. (Yes, I know that is a bit odd since I live in Boulder, Colorado. The reason I listen to this program is because what is talked about in the UK will soon be talked about here as well. It doesn’t take long for trends of all sorts to travel across the Atlantic Ocean.) A recurring topic in recent BBC podcasts has been community cohesion throughout Britain. The combination of a wave of immigrants (many Muslim) with a culture that has embraced pluralism is creating a crisis in British cultural identity. Residents of the UK are highly segmented and polarized, perhaps even more so than we Americans with our red states or blue states, our NBC or Univision, and our Move-on.org or Focus-on-the-Family.com. Many recent conversations on Radio 4 have centered on how to help Muslim youth assimilate into British culture, primarily out of a fear of the radicalization of this next generation. This is a reasonable fear, since recent terror attacks in the UK have been committed by British-born Muslims and the presence of many vocal, radical Muslims in London. How can the postmodern UK avoid the continued alienation of Muslim young men? I don’t think it can. Postmodern pluralism isn’t satisfying for a great number of the next generation of Britons, whether Muslim or from any other background. The dominance of postmodernism is creating a cultural vacuum in the UK that the Muslim worldview and others are rushing in to fill. As Groothuis says: “A leading feature of postmodernity is the breakdown of social and religious concensus, or rampant pluralism, which tends to fray social cohesion” (53). Sadly the Church of England is currently unable to muster much response, having been forced to deal with the Anglican Communion’s internal divisions by the Episcopal Church (USA)’s obstinate refusal to refrain from consecrating practicing gay men and theologically liberal women as presiding bishops. Continued reformation of the Church in England and reckless proclamation of the gospel there remain our only source of hope.
This was my third time reading through Truth Decay. The first was seven years ago, and at that time it was one of the first books I had read on postmodernism. Now having read a number of others since then, it is easier for me to trace how Groothuis is developing his ideas upon the foundations of C.S. Lewis, Carl F.H. Henry, Francis Schaeffer and Gene Edward Veith. This time through, one of the more helpful insights I gleaned was this: “Scripture makes distinctions between the proclamation of the gospel, the defense of the gospel and the communal defense of the gospel. Christians who subscribe to postmodernist ideas absorb the defense of the gospel into proclamation and manifestation, given their views on language, truth and rationality.” (162) This helps me better understand why some people in my church are reticent about a verbal witness and apologetic ministry. Postmodernism has affected their understanding of truth as universal and antithetical, and of the need for rational discourse.
Yesterday I listened to a podcast from a Baptist seminary president who was interviewing a contemporary secularist. The secularist was arguing that her ethics were probably 95% the same as his. Again, I found Groothuis helpful when he wrote, “A close reading of postmodernist ethics reveals some understanding of ethical principles that transcend the merely cultural. These are buried beneath much verbiage and muddled with contradictions about relativity and contingency but the can be unearthed.” (208) Whether we are speaking to a contemporary pre-modern pagan, or a contemporary modern materialist, or a contemporary postmodern ironist, we can be sure that the ethical image of God remains in them, even though it has been thoroughly corrupted by the fall and buried underneath their often-verbose philsophies.
Groothuis still gets on my nerves with his chapter “Race, Gender and Postmodernism.” Galatians 3:26-28 becomes the hermeneutical lens through which every other Pauline passage is interpreted, even though its context is primarily about salvation, not gender roles in marriage and the church. I am left wondering why he has chosen to ride this theological hobby horse in a book about postmodernism. I doubt that many people have actually accused him of allowing postmodernism into his theology because of his egalitarian position. This chapter just doesn’t fit the overall purpose of the book and should have been left out. In footnotes, Groothuis often credits his wife’s authorship of certain sections of the book. He should have just added her name on the cover.
I’ll close this review with one last helpful quote from the chapter on art.
“Evangelicals tend to view art according to simple moral concerns (it ought not be pornographic, attack God or be otherwise immoral). They also deem it pragmatic (it serves evangelistic or moral ends), sentimental (God looks at the heart, not at the art) and as unrelated to objective aesthetic standards (there is no accounting for taste). While these views are not uniquely postmodernist, they dangerously overlap postmodernist philosophies and sensibilities. Christians who hold these views cannot mount a strong counterinsurgency to postmodernismin the arts, a realm that touches us all so deeply and repeatedly.” (260)
Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism, Douglas Goothuis, IVP, 2000
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