Postmodernist Approaches
As Grassie (1997) notes: “Postmodernism represents a great range of philosophical points of view” and reflects what he terms “A broad and elusive movement of thought”. It is, in other words, an approach to thinking about the social world that encompasses a wide range of different viewpoints gathered under the theoretically convenient (but potentially misleading) banner of postmodernism. This does, of course, present us with a couple of problems, the main one being that, when thinking specifically about religion, postmodernism doesn’t present a particularly unified face to the world. This “lack of theoretical unity” is reflected in Taylor’s (1987) observation that: "For some, postmodernism suggests the death of God and the disappearance of religion, for others, the return of traditional faith, and for others still, the possibility of recasting religious ideas".
Although this makes it particularly difficult to talk convincingly about postmodernist approaches to religion, there are arguably a range of general concepts employed by postmodernists that can be applied to an understanding of such behaviour. In this respect, a couple of initial concepts are initially significant:
Narratives: This idea holds, rightly or wrongly, that knowledge consists of stories that compete with one another to explain something. From this position religion represents just another form of narrative - one that, more importantly, can sometimes be considered a:
Metanarrative (or “big story”): Narratives sometimes break out of small-scale story telling and become all-encompassing stories that seek to explain “everything about something” (or, in some cases, “everything about everything”, to paraphrase Rosenau’s (1992) characterisation of the “religion metanarrative”). Religious metanarratives, in this sense, represent a general structure or framework around which individual beliefs, practices and experiences can be orientated and, of course, ordered. It also follows from this that metanarratives invariably involve a claim to exclusive truth about whatever it is they’re explaining.
The idea of religion as a metanarrative has two significant implications:
Firstly, for Lyotard (1997), the postmodern condition involves an “incredulity toward metanarratives” - a general disbelief that any single set of beliefs has a monopoly of truth.
Secondly, Ritzer (1992) argues, postmodern approaches represent an "assault on structure…and structural approaches” to understanding and explanation.
In general terms, therefore, postmodernists argue the structural frameworks that, in the past, supported organised religions (their ability to explain the nature of the world, for example), increasingly come under attack from competing world views - from the 16th century onwards in Western Europe, for example, this has involved the rise of scientific explanations. Many things that were once plausibly explained by religion are now more plausibly explained by scientific narratives - and, in consequence, the metanarrative foundations of organised religions are undermined by competing explanations and systematically:
Deconstructed: That is, broken down, in two ways: a decline in the ability of religion to exert power and control over people’s lives and a gradual retreat into what are termed “local narratives” or small stories about people’s situations and circumstances. In other words, religion, where it continues to exert influence, does so in terms of individual:
Identities: In postmodern society people are exposed to a variety of different sources of information and ideas that compete for attention - the world is no longer one where meaning and truth can be imposed and policed by elites, for example. On the contrary, people are increasingly presented with a range of possible choices and critiques that encourages:
• Scepticism towards metanarratives. For every “big story” there are a multitude of “alternative stories”.
• Hybridity: Postmodern society encourages the development of cultural hybrids - new ways of thinking and acting that develop out of the combination of old ways of behaving.
In this respect, Jencks (1996) notes how “The Post-Modern Age is a time of incessant choosing. It's an era when no orthodoxy can be adopted without self-consciousness and irony, because all traditions seem to have some validity…Pluralism, the "ism" of our time, is both the great problem and the great opportunity”.
The outcome of choice - and a plurality of opportunities, meanings and behaviours - is that religious symbols, for example, lose much of their original meaning and power as they are adopted into the everyday (profane) world of fashion and display.
An example here is the co-option of Rastafarian religious signs and symbols (such as dreadlocks) into some parts of mainstream fashion.
Religious practice, therefore, no longer holds a central place in people’s everyday life or identity; instead, it lives on as a set of accoutrements and adornments to the construction of identity - something that occurs not only in the world of objects (rings and pendants, for example) but also in the world of beliefs.
New forms of religious belief develop not as metanarrative but as part of individual narratives. These, as with the objects that accompany them, are “picked up, worn for a time and then discarded” much as one might wear a fashionable coat until it becomes unfashionable.
Postmodernism reflects (or possibly encourages) a contradictory set of ideas about the significance of religious ideas, practices and organisations in both the past and the present. At one and the same time, for example, we see the ideas of religious:
Decline - as organised religions lose their ability to control and influence events in the secular (non-religious) world and:
Development - in that religious beliefs and practices shift and change, reflecting perhaps basic beliefs in “supernatural phenomena” but expressed in ways that are far removed from organised religious services. In this respect, religion (or, perhaps more correctly, religions) is viewed as being constantly reinvented to reflect the ways people choose and discard different forms of personal identity (the currently fashionable Kabbalah religion being a case in point).
In addition, further contradictions are in evidence in relation to the:
Privatisation and Deprivatisation of religion: Although there are clear signs of a move towards privatised forms of religious belief (religion as something practiced in the private rather than the public sphere), organised religion stubbornly refuses to disappear. On the contrary, there’s evidence (with some forms of Islam and Christianity in particular) of a contrary process of organised forms of religion re-emerging as significant aspects of public life.
Weeding the Path: This diversity of thought makes it difficult, in some ways, to evaluate postmodern approaches to religion because, as we’ve suggested, a common set of unifying principles is absent. This is not to say, however, that we can’t offer up some observations about postmodern approaches.
Metanarratives: Callinicos (1991) argues that postmodernism is itself a form of the “metanarrative thinking” postmodernists claim to dismiss as being unsustainable. More significantly, postmodernism’s inclusive approach to metanarratives - placing scientific ideologies (such as positivism) on a par with religious ideologies - has the (unintended) effect of actually strengthening the position of religion; if both science and religion have the same metanarrative status (and postmodernists such as Lyotard (1997) suggest we should be equally sceptical about the respective claims of both) it follows that religious beliefs and explanations are no less valid than scientific beliefs and explanations. - something like Creationism (or “Intelligent Design”, a belief about how the earth was created based on a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible), for example, can claim the same explanatory status as something like evolutionary theory.
This idea leads us to consider a further question, namely:
Resacralization: One of the enduring contradictions described by postmodern approaches is noted by McLeod (1997) when he observes postmodernity is an “'era of religious fragmentation, characterised by religious pluralism and conflicting evidence of both secularization and sacralization”. In this respect, a general decline in overt forms of religious practice (such as attendance at religious ceremonies), sits alongside a reinvigoration of both public and private religious practice (in America, for example, Church attendances are generally rising). The basic idea here, therefore, is that religion actually becomes both less important to people in terms of practice, but more important as a
source of personal and social identity. In a world that appears increasingly confusing and unstable, religions become beacons of order and stability by their ability to produce moral certainties. Thus, in a world of moral relativism - where one sets of beliefs and values is as good (or bad) as any other - religions are reinvigorated precisely because what they have to offer is no worse than any other form of explanation (and, possibly, a good deal more attractive than some). In this respect, Bauman (1992) argues, ‘postmodernity can be seen as restoring…a re-enchantment of the world that modernity tried hard to disenchant”. On the other hand, Bauman (1997) also addresses the issue of religious:
Fundamentalism: This represents a form of religious belief and organisation that advocates a strict observance of the “fundamental beliefs” of a religion, whether it be of the Christian variety in America or the Islamic variety in Iran. For Bauman, fundamentalist religions draw their strength from the ability to provide certainties in an uncertain world - from a belief in the principles laid down in the Old Testament of Christianity (an “eye for an eye”, for example) to the clear specification of how men and women should dress and behave in Islam. Bauman’s ideas, in this respect, link to Beck’s (1992) concept of:
Risk in the sense fundamentalist religions, by removing choice also remove risk. The individual, by being given clear moral guidelines has the “dread of risk taking” (and the consequences of those risks) removed.
Weeding the Path: Ideas about the relationship between postmodernity and religious fundamentalism need to be considered in relation to two ideas; firstly, that such fundamentalism is not necessarily new - it has existed at various times throughout history - and secondly whether contemporary forms of fundamentalism are actually linked with postmodernity, per se, or some other socio-economic processes.
The final idea we can note is:
Meaning: For many postmodernist writers religious signs and symbols have lost their “original” meaning - they become, in Baudrillard’s (1988) terms:
Simulacra, or things that simulate something that may once have been real. These simulations are not imitations; they are just as real as the things they simulate - televised religious services, for example, give the appearance of participation in a real religious service although, of course, the two experiences are quantitatively and qualitatively different. For Baudrillard, religious simulacra give the appearance of religiosity (wearing a cross, for example) but are, he argues, actually empty and devoid of any original meaning they once had - they “simulate divinity” as he puts it and, in so doing, devalue both the meaning and substance of religion. Sedgwick (2004), on the other hand, suggests this argument is overstated, when he notes the distinction between:
Organised religions, such as the Catholic Church and:
“Disorganised” religions, that involve a certain level of spirituality - a belief in the supernatural, for example - but which are not always explicitly practised in the same way as organised religions.
As he notes “We are often told that people are wide open to the idea of the spiritual - the religious, the numinous, call it what you like - but have no time for organised religion. And so the churches are emptying while they pursue their quest elsewhere” and suggests people are “…looking for private religion - that is, religion they can practise with minimal interruption to their normal routine and without having to bother about burdensome responsibilities. "I want the feel-good factor, but not the cost of commitment" - that, in reality, is what such people are saying. Putting it bluntly, private religion is essentially selfish religion”.
Bauman (1997) is equally scathing of “the new spiritualism”: "Postmodernity is the era of experts in ‘identity problems’ of personality healers, of marriage guides, of writers of ‘how to reassert yourself’ books; it is the era of the ‘counselling boom’. Business executives need spiritual counselling and their organizations need spiritual healing. Uncertainty postmodern-style begets not the demand for religion…[but] the ever rising demand for identity-experts".