relativism

Why Campus Ministry Is So Challenging

Christian evangelistic ministry on college and university campuses is incredibly important, but also extremely challenging. Why is that? Is it because college students are typically smarter and better educated than the average person, so that campus ministers have be equipped to deal with serious intellectual objections to the Christian faith?

Generally, no. It’s challenging mainly because too many college students have had their God-given minds so warped by relativism and postmodern anti-realism (the view that ‘reality’ is defined by how we choose to think and speak about the world) that they will cheerfully deny what’s plainly obvious for the sake of political correctness.

Further evidence of the problem appeared in my Twitter feed this morning:

I’d love to think this is a spoof, but it isn’t. (Sadly, despite what the students in the video suggest, I can’t make something true merely by wishing or thinking that it’s true!) Behold the rotten fruit of the sexual revolution and its repudiation of a biblical worldview.

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Who’s Afraid of Relativism?

Here’s the longer version of my review of Who’s Afraid of Relativism? by James K. A. Smith. Edited versions were recently published by The Gospel Coalition (here) and Reformation21 (here).


For some time now James K. A. Smith’s agenda has been to enter into critical but charitable conversation with postmodernist writers, looking for points at which their arguments resonate with Christian claims and undermine the common enemy of modernism. I believe this is a worthy and worthwhile project, although I have questions about whether Smith is sufficiently critical, as I will indicate below. Smith’s 2006 book Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? purported to “take to church” three leading postmodernists: Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Michel Foucault. He argued that some of the distinctive claims of these writers have been misunderstood and misrepresented by evangelicals; properly understood they offer epistemological insights that ought to be affirmed by Christians. The hope was to introduce a lay Christian audience to “the real postmodernism” and to foster, if not a close friendship, at least a fruitful mutual acquaintance.

Who's Afraid of Relativism?Who’s Afraid of Relativism? is a follow-up to Smith’s earlier book. On this occasion Smith seeks to play the role of defense attorney for ‘relativism’; more precisely, the philosophy of pragmatism as propounded by the controversial American philosopher Richard Rorty. His central thesis is easily identified, since it is repeated in different forms throughout the book: pragmatism is a philosophy centered on the recognition of our dependence, finitude, and contingency; thus Christians, who acknowledge the dependence, finitude, and contingency of the creation, ought to be sympathetic rather than hostile toward pragmatism. As Smith puts it, “My thesis is that Christians should be ‘relativists,’ of a sort, precisely because of the biblical understanding of creation and creaturehood.” (p. 12)

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