To return to my main point: eclectic, simplistic, and popularized appropriation of Wittgensteinian linguistics and uncritical engagement with pop culture finds fertile soil in a movement committed not so much to the real implications of Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language as to the defusing of the problems faced by a transdenominational movement seeking a place at that oft-mentioned but somewhat nebulous ‘‘table.’’ Evangelicalism is, after all, based not upon comprehensive dogmatic formulation but upon a loose collection of elective affinities, only some of which are doctrinal. I would argue, therefore, that seen in this light, the long-term contribution of postmodernism to evangelicalism will ultimately be seen to be more of form than of substance; ho-hum, the singer changes yet again, but, in the words of Led Zeppelin, the song remains the same. This is surely why evangelical expressions of postmodernism are often so tame and uncritical compared to their counterparts in the secular academy; and why they are rarely taken seriously by those outside of the evangelical subculture. In my admittedly limited experience it does not really seem to be the case that postmodern evangelicals want to engage with the truly radical philosophical implications of the various postmodern philosophies; it is rather that evangelicals are drawn to the idiom of postmodernism because it facilitates a hip, trendy, and culturally plausible in-house defense of the classic, established evangelical notion of a mere Christianity.
Further, evangelical postmodernism often fails to subject postmodernism itself to any radical critique. Instead, it seems to assume its basic validity as a given and therefore, by implication, as ideologically neutral. Postmodernism’s allegedly overwhelming cultural dominance does not, of course, in any way prove its validity; yet one must search hard for any serious postconservative evangelical discussion of the possibility, articulated so well by Jameson, Anderson, and Eagleton among others, that postmodernism might itself be a highly ideological modernism extended to its absolute limits. The reason for this critical lacuna? To quote Bob Dylan again, you never ask questions with God on your side; and to the extent that postmodernism is the all-embracing, omnipresent, god-like cultural system which imperiously castrates and internalizes all opposition; and to the extent that mere Christianity is the evangelicals’ God-given ideal, there is no need to ask the really critical questions.16 Postmodern evangelicalism, like much of postmodernism, presents itself to the world with all the smug self-importance of a radical revolution. Yet this is an illusion, because the end result at which it aims is as old as the hills, as exclusively doctrinaire as it can be, and as traditional and conservative as it comes: an old-hat, mere Christianity, articulated in a con- temporary cultural idiom which actually renders it utterly powerless to challenge the dominant culture and yet impervious to criticism.
Excerpt from Carl Trueman’s Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Night
August 01, 2010, 2:37pm
