The Gospel and Postmodernism page 1 The Gospel and Postmodernism

A comment that is often heard in missiological circles is that Europe and even the United States is becoming post-Christian. Some go so far as to state that Europe is already post-Christian. I think this statement carries a lot of truth. However, I think this statement tends to mask the real issue. I would suggest that the real issue in not post-Christendom but postmodernism. The western world is undergoing a rapid cultural shift away from a previously held worldview. This shift is affecting the way religion and Christianity are perceived by those who have undergone this shift of worldview or hold some aspects of the new worldview. It is this shift in worldview and the Church’s failure to understand and adjust to this new way of perceiving reality that is to a large measure, causing the rejection of organized religion and more specifically Evangelical Christianity in Europe and to a lesser extent in the United States. One of the difficulties of this shift in world view is that it is has caused significant cultural change that does not have the usual earmarks of a different culture. Western postmodernists look, dress, and speak just like western modernists. They eat in the same restaurants, work in the same offices, and their children go to the same schools. In othe