Culture is where spiritual longings are exposed – Brett McCracken
When I say ‘new,’ I mean it in the sense of emerging as a term in popular culture. The term itself has been around for a while (initially describing trends in American literature), but as a term describing what was happening in our culture it became popularised through a paper written in 2010 by Dutch cultural analysts Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker entitled “Notes on Metamodernism.” In their article they were seeking to describe the cultural shift they had been observing in the arts and culture, and they outlined what they saw as key facets of metamodernism. That article served as a catalyst for lots of dialogue over metamodernism. Before we get there, here’s the approach I’ll take in this article:
2) What it is
3) How it reveals itself
4) The Church’s opportunity
A Very Brief history of thought
What is interesting about post-modernism as a way of thinking is that within academic circles it’s been proclaimed as now dead. I’m not too sure about that(but I’m probably just revealing my ignorance of the finer nuances of this philosophical approach): I’m thinking more along the lines of that it may be on life-support or perhaps a course of anti-biotics, but if it is dead then we’re still experiencing the stench of the corpse. Ideas don’t tend to die that quickly. It certainly isn’t a sustainably liveable philosophy, but I need only point out the woke movement as a fruit of post-modernism (which granted is certainly getting a massive push-back) as well as the string of Christians engaging in the deconstruction of their faith. In terms of metamodernism, it seems that it isn’t a case of post-modernism being dead, but rather it is being morphed into something different.
Meta-modernism is unique from modernism and especially post-modernism in that it seeks to find a bridge by utilising the best of both worlds, except the best here is the positive aspects of modernism and the negative aspects of post-modernism. If you were to use Hegel’s concept of history as analogy, then modernism would be the thesis, post-modernism would be the anti-thesis and meta-modernism the synthesis. Meta is a Greek prefix that can be used in the sense of with, between and beyond, and metamodernism places itself both alongside and between (and beyond) modernism and post-modernism, but oscillating between the various poles of these two ideological frameworks like a pendulum swinging. As Vermeulen and Akker explain:
Another writer describes it as follows:
So how do we define it?
Vermuelen and Akker describe it as a “structure of feeling” marked by “(often guarded) hopefulness and (at times feigned) sincerity”—deriving from a realization that “history is moving rapidly beyond its much proclaimed end.”
Please tell me I’m not the only one that went “huh?” at reading their descriptions!
Brett McCraken from Gospel Coalition helpfully explains it as follows:
If this seems like a “have your cake and eat it too” philosophy, that’s sort of the point. Shaped by the endless, have-it-your-way horizons of the internet (a structural multiverse of innumerable “truths”), metamodernism is a worldview as wide open and consumer friendly as the smartphone. Take or leave what you want, follow or unfollow, swipe right or left: it’s your iWorld, so make it a good one.
So how does it reveal itself?
But how does it further reveal itself in popular culture?
There are many manifestations. Vincent Benjamin in his article for Christianity Today highlights three observations: apocalyptic hope, the inversion of worldview building and the construction of highly narrated identities. In terms of apocalyptic hope, we are dealing with a generation that has known nothing but global crisis after global crisis, so that while they might get shocked by events, they’re not surprised. But whilst recognising that things are bad, they don’t want to necessarily buy into dystopian futures: they want to see what they can do to change it.
As for inverted worldview building, this is quite interesting as well. Most of us grew up with questions of ethics being built upon a foundation that we hold to be true: so we believe Christianity to be true and then build our ethics upon that. In metamodernism, this is inverted, in that the individual will decide what their ethic is, and then look for an ideology that matches.
With respect to highly narrated identities, as James Emery White explains, what happens here is that we would self-diagnose who we are and, from that, over-narrate our identity under the impression that we are bettering our mental health. In other words, you self-diagnose and identify with your self-diagnosis. You overanalyze your own story to explain, justify or solve your problems. This is most clearly seen in the LGBTQ movement which is now including the self-identifying as animals.
The Church’s Challenge & Opportunity
This creates an apologetic challenge, because incoherence is not an issue to this generation. Nonetheless a surprising opportunity presents itself not so much in defending the existence of truth (which we must continue to do) but in explaining why Biblical ethics are good, and how many of the ethics that metamodernists hold onto have their roots in Scripture.
Another observation is that while Christians don’t embrace contradictions, we do embrace paradox! Think of the paradox of predestination and free will, or the Incarnational doctrine of fully God as though not man and fully man as though not God, or the doctrine of the Trinity: Three in one – you get the idea. One particular paradox which will resonate with metamodernists is that of Transcendence and Immanence of God.
I also think that metamodernism is probably the most ‘authentically human’ outlook on life that we have seen for a while, and I would attribute this to the fact that it has in a sense developed ‘naturally’ out of disillusionment with previous ways of thinking. Human nature is full of contradictions, but this represents a way of seeking to fill a void that only God can fill.
Ultimately, the longings revealed find their answer in the gospel. For example, identity is not a rabbit hole of excuses to justify behaviour, but can be fully realised in understanding who God created us to be. And yes, the world is in crisis, and we groan with creation as in Romans 8, but the story is not over yet because Christ has promised a new beginning. And of course there is a reason the world is in a mess: sin. But there’s a reason we can have hope: redemption.
How long will this way of thinking be with us? Probably longer than post-modernism, but ultimately it is not going to satisfy either. But the hunger for meaning, for resonating with transcendence, the desire to fix things against all hope: we can speak into that.