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Forrest Gump is a very well known movie that came out in 1994 and has been nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won six Oscars. Tom Hanks stars as Forrest, who, despite the many adversities he faces, is able to overcome these disadvantages and is able to play college football on scholarship, win medals of honor fighting in Vietnam, become a millionaire, and marry the girl of his dreams. Forrest's mother, drawing from the principles of existentialism, ensures Forrest that his circumstances do not define him and he is the one who creates his own identity. As Forrest famously says, "life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get;" each person is born into a different circumstance and has the power to define who he/she is. Unlike Jean-Paul Sartre's atheistic existentialism, Forrest and his mother share a Christian existentialist perspective. Forrest's mother tells him "you’ve got to do the best with what God gave you." God is sovereign over each person's circumstances, but the individual has the ability and responsibility to create his/her destiny.

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Films

Terri Murray reviews a classic satire.

In 1994, when Robert Zemekis' cinematic sensation Forrest Gump topped the box office and waltzed away with six Oscar nominations, the critics were firmly in two camps: either the film was unworthy escapism, or it was an ultraconservative conspiracy to communicate an outdated message of traditional values such as patriotism, capitalism and the family. The liberal elite delivered the resounding verdict that there was no serious moral to the story, or else there was a highly suspicious one. And in typically literalist fashion, right-wingers in America lauded the film as a thinly-veiled assault on the counterculture, arriving at an astonishingly simplistic interpretation of the film: Jenny, Forrest's sweetheart, took drugs, hung out with anti-Vietnam types, and was rewarded with AIDS. By contrast, Forrest wore his country's uniform, invested wisely, went to church, and made a mint. Yet the film never suggests that making the cover of Fortune magazine (as Forrest does) is where our human aspirations ought to lie. Forrest Gump deserves to be rediscovered.

As the film opens we see a white feather fluttering on the wind as it gradually floats down, eventually landing next to Forrest Gump's dirty-tennis-shoe-clad foot. Gump is sitting on a park bench in Savannah, Georgia, a box of chocolates perched on his lap. These two symbols, the feather and the chocolates, illustrate the film's true key theme: Fate - the uncontrollable events that make each of us what we are. But the film's emphasis is not on fate itself, but on our responses to what fate deals us. While we can't decide what happens to us, we each have important choices to make in the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Thus in many ways the film's message is existentialist.

In Existentialism and Humanism (1946) Jean-Paul Sartre distinguishes between human nature and the human condition (p.45 ff). Sartre rejected the idea that we possess a generic nature, in the sense of an essence that can be found in each and every human being. Nevertheless, he argued that we share a universality of condition. We find ourselves thrown into the world, and we share the necessities of having to labour and die here. While these necessities are fixed and universal, Sartre stresses that there is nothing about this condition that determines the kind of life we must lead, either as individuals or as groups. Thus our condition limits us in various ways, but it does not compel us to behave in particular ways. Our common predicament means that we must give moral shape to our lives through our free choices. This is an enormous responsibility, because, since humanity has no essence, each of us is literally responsible for creating our humanity. If we choose a holocaust, says Sartre, then this is what we have made of 'human nature'. Likewise, if we choose resistance or peace, then this is what 'humanity' has become for us. Forrest Gump is about these sorts of choices.

The real target of Forrest Gump 's critique is the (typically Protestant) American notion that material rewards are the inevitable outcome of a virtuous, industrious life. The film shows that by contrast, people don't get what they deserve, and life isn't fair; it's more like a box of chocolates: "you never know what you're gonna get." All of the main characters in the story - Forrest, Mrs Gump, Jenny, Lt. Dan, Bubba - are dealt their share of suffering and grief. Forrest is born mentally disabled, and with "a back as crooked as a politician"; Mrs Gump's husband has left her; Jenny's only parent, her father, is abusive; Lt. Dan gets his legs blown off in the war; Bubba is killed in Vietnam while others survive. None of us can control fate, but in an important sense we make our own destiny by the ways in which we respond to it. On her deathbed, Mrs Gump summarises this philosophy: "I happen to believe you make your own destiny. You've got to do the best with what God gave you."

To illustrate this philosophy, in an early scene, Mrs Gump tries to instil in her son a belief that he is "the same as everybody else." Despite the fact that the young Forrest is mentally slow and has to wear braces on his legs, he is entitled to the same opportunities and has the same human dignity as everyone else. "If God had wanted everyone to be the same," Mrs Gump explains, "then He would have made it so everyone had braces on their legs." When she attempts to enrol Forrest in school, the Principal insists that Forrest will have to go to a special school because his intelligence is below normal. But Mrs Gump refuses to deny Forrest the same opportunities as everybody else, and to that end she's willing to prostitute herself. While the Principal is collecting his bribe from Mrs Gump, young Forrest hears loud grunts emanating from her bedroom. When the guardian of institutional normality emerges, wiping the post-coital sweat from his brow, it is he who is made to look stupid, when the young Forrest mimics his grunts. This scene highlights the Principal's hypocrisy: he is the head official in an institution that exists for the purpose of improving people's minds, yet his own mind is too small to conquer his libido. Meanwhile, Mrs Gump's behaviour may be socially unacceptable, but her intention is worthy and she doesn't feel ashamed. This scene alone is a damning indictment of 1950s American social institutions.

These scenes establish Mrs Gump's moral voice in the story. She is the main influence on Forrest's life, and her message is that what makes him the same as everybody else is not that his natural endowments are identical to everyone else's (none of us are equal in that sense), but that, like everyone else, he has the potential to make his own destiny with what fate has given him. His basic human condition (what Sartre would've called his facticity) is what makes Forrest just like anyone else.

Lt. Dan learns the film's central message painfully when his own destiny veers off the expected path, disrupting his family's tradition of war martyrdom. Lt. Dan curses God for instead being made to live with a physical disability. He is reluctant to accept the fact that life is unfair. Yet although the facts are arbitrary, our ability to make choices and to do something with our condition is fair, as the ability to choose is equally distributed to all. In the realm of freedom we all have an equal opportunity to give our lives value. Dan is only liberated from his crippling emotional bitterness when he finally accepts that his freedom, his ability to make the most with what destiny dictates, is where the real value of his life lies.

Forrest delivers the film's central motif at Jenny's grave: "I don't know if Mama was right, or if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental like on a breeze... but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time." The seemingly arbitrary feather on the wind is a symbol of our lives. We too are tossed about by destiny, with little control over where we've come from or where we're going. But Forrest Gump shows us we still have important choices to make in spite of this, and that these choices give our lives its real value.

Different Lives

So many box office hits are about protagonists who exert power and control, mostly over others. By comparison, Forrest Gump is an unlikely hero. He is depicted as 'innocent but harmless', ie, too dull to be cunning or dangerous. Because he does not have the ability to be calculating, he genuinely cares for other people, because he innocently ( naively from the cynical perspective of American politics) thinks that other people really matter. Forrest's natural altruism, and his inability to measure the value of his life against the 'normal' criteria of competitive achievement, along with Lt. Dan's triumph over his own resentment, offers viewers a real source of inspiration, rather than another escapist fantasy of omnipotence. While most Hollywood blockbusters celebrate a kind of heroic hyperperfection inconceivable in real life, Gump reveals the bravery it takes to accept our mere humanity and turn our trials to fortune, both for others and ourselves. While some critics lamented that this fortune had to be taken so literally ('Bubba Gump Shrimp' turns Forrest into a millionaire), I still believe the film is better understood as a scathing critique of American capitalist values and the profit-driven worldview that underpins them. In the real world, a morally-innocent millionaire is virtually an oxymoron. This is primarily because, as we instinctively know, morality is distinct from self-interest, the cardinal rule of capitalism. As soon as we begin to ponder the question 'Why should I be good?' we understand that a genuinely good person would not need to ask what's in it for him. If one seeks a reward for an act of goodness, then the motive isn't good but selfish. The principal at Greenbow Central City School is 'good' to Forrest only when he has something to gain; and the same can be said for the University of Alabama. Forrest's exploitation at the hands of the football team, which after five years allows him to get a college degree, is a comment on how even education in America is little more than a cynical business transaction.

Forrest Gump is a witty satire which holds the American political establishment up to moral scrutiny, especially the military-industrial complex. Time and again, Forrest's naïve innocence is contrasted with the cunning cleverness of those who exploit him, also including the US military. When Gump is awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his service in Vietnam, President Johnson kicked off the award ceremony by announcing the need for further escalation of the war in Vietnam. When the President asks to see Forrest's wound, this provides an opportunity for a not-too-subtle affront to the motives behind the ceremony, as Forrest moons him (the wound was on his buttocks). At the Washington monument, we see a uniformed man unplug the sound system in order to deny freedom of speech to Vietnam vet Forrest and other anti-war protestors. The silencing of Forrest is linked to the historical silencing of Abbie Hoffman and other young American anti-war protestors: Forrest is led to the speaker's podium by Hoffman, the co-founder of the Youth International Party, who along with six others was tried for conspiracy for his outspoken role in protesting at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The film also reminds viewers several times that all of America's genuine moral icons have been killed by Americans, from John F. Kennedy to John Lennon.

Cunning cleverness is what Forrest so desperately lacks, yet the question posed by this film is whether he is really any worse off for it. Forrest says to Jenny, "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is." The lurking question is whether the smart men who lead his country know what love is at all. Gump is continually being given accolades by politicos at the White House, the insinuation being that they prefer dumb, compliant Americans, so that they can carry on screwing them over. Yet Forrest's innocent responses to their public relations stunts render them as foolish as him, because the viewer sees through the hypocrisy of their empty rituals and cynical PR ploys. The viewer's sympathies stay with Forrest throughout, and the film leaves on-lookers lamenting the loss of innocent idealism that Forrest represents. As such, Forrest Gump is a swan song to the more honourable values that once made America great.

The film ends the way it began, with the white feather floating away, leaving viewers to wonder what fate will bring to the next generation of (smarter) Gumps, and how they too will respond to circumstances they cannot foresee.

© T.M. Murray 2011

Terri Murray is an American film producer and lecturer living in London. She is author of Feminist Film Studies: A Guide for Teachers (Auteur, 2007).

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Forrest Gump | Issue 83 | Philosophy Now

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Is the Secularization of Society a Good Thing for the Church? 

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Is the Secularization of Society a Good Thing for the Church? 

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Secularism is the shift in society away from mainstream Christian culture. The lack of religious influence in society is evidenced by how religion is no longer taught in public schools and the decline in professing Christians. Though it may appear that the Church is losing its reach in society, secularism might actually be beneficial for the Church's spiritual health. In a secular society, Christianity is not assumed to be an individual's default religion. It is less likely for people to claim to be Christian when the gospel has no real impact on their hearts or lives. Was "Christian society" of "Christendom"  actually Christian or was it really just a society that celebrated Christian moral values? Rather than seeing secularism as a threat to Christian society, Christians should embrace the opportunity "to demonstrate what being Christian is about in ways not defined by the tradition of Christendom, which for various reasons has contributed to society’s dislike of the church." Christianity should not be a part of someone's culture or a tradition that they follow; it is a deeply meaningful faith that is lifestyle-altering and perspective-changing. Do you believe that secularism is a good thing for the Church? What are some ways that secularism has negatively impacted the Church? What are some ways that the Church can change how it reaches out to society in an increasingly secularized society?

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One of the outcomes of my research on church and society has been to help church people see how something is different now in terms of the church and its place and engagement with society. I have used the concept of Christendom/post-Christendom as one way to illustrate this. Another concept that can be useful in showing this difference is secularisation. In this post I hope to provide an introduction to secularisation and why it's not bad for the church.

The word 'secular' simply means not connected with religious or spiritual matters, so a secular society is a society not concerned with religious or spiritual matters. Secularisation refers to the historical process in which religion loses social and cultural significance.

From a church and Christian perspective, being in a secular society gives me a sense of ease and neutrality: I am free to be Christian, and others are free to be Christian too if they see value in it, rather than being born into it or being socialised into it without a process leading to lasting conviction.

Christianity is marginal

In his 1980 discussion on the secularisation of modern society, an academic called Gilbert used the term "post-Christian" to describe Britain at the latter part of the twentieth century. By "post-Christian" he did not mean there is no Christian existence or expression, but rather that Christianity has become marginal.

Gilbert described post-Christian Britain as a place where it is normal to be irreligious, and it is conventional to think and act in secular ways. There is also no status or respectability dependant on practice or profession of religious faith, so for example in wider society, a title such as "Reverend" has no significance.

Christianity is a sub-culture

In this post-Christian Britain Gilbert talks of there are still people within society that find Christianity a profound and vital influence in their lives, but these people are situated outside the mainstream of social life and culture. Gilbert described these Christians in post-Christian Britain as:

Like the early Christians in a pre-Christian, classical world, they became a 'peculiar people', anomalous in their primary beliefs, assumptions, values and norms, distinctive in important aspects of outlook and behaviour. They become a sub-culture.

Christianity is not the dominant framework

More than two decades later, another academic named Brown , when commenting on what he calls the "death of Christian Britain", describes Gilbert's "post-Christian Britain" not just as a story of church decline, but as an end of the framework of Christianity that gives people a means to create their identities.

Rather than a long-term religious decline, Brown subscribes to a "short and sharp cultural revolution of the late twentieth century" , which started in the 1960s. Brown does not use the paradigm concept of Christendom/post-Christendom, but rather this revolution he talks of in the 1960s was part of secularisation.

Christianity and identity

It was not the presence of churches or Christians that made Britain Christian, but rather the way Christianity infused public culture that was adopted by people in the forming of identity, regardless of whether they were churchgoers or not , and this loss is part of the process of secularisation. Brown locates secularisation:

"in the changing conditions which allowed previously regarded Christian and social 'sins' to be regarded as acceptable and moral" .

Something is different now

The phenomenon of secularisation explains why society is different now, compared to say 30, or 50, or 100 years ago. Another academic, Taylor , describes the result of secularisation as being in a society where people can engage fully in politics without ever encountering God, and in this description illustrates the point of change:

This [lack of encounter with God] would have been inescapable in earlier centuries in Christendom .

Taylor illustrates this "encountering God" by describing a time when the functioning mode of local government was the parish, in the days when the parish was primarily a community of prayer, which formed a context impossible to be free from the concept of God .

Christianity is one among many

Taylor describes a change in society from where it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to where Christian faith is now one human possibility among others, he says:

Belief in God is no longer axiomatic [self-evident or unquestionable]. There are alternatives... Secularity in this sense is a matter of the whole context of understanding in which our moral, spiritual or religious experience and search takes place .

As a person with Christian spirituality, I really warm to this description of secularity. It implies that people who want to live out a Christian spirituality can do so, and those who do not live by such a framework, are free to live by other frameworks. This is the reality in many so-called western parts of the world, and I believe this is a significant game-changer in the way churches are to do mission and evangelism. We can't view mission and evangelism through a lens that sees society having a Christian framework - or wishing it did.

The historical shaping of society screams out evidence of the Christian framework, much of this can be easily identified in New Zealand in things like Easter holidays, Anzac Day services, and some urban town planning such as Christchurch city which used to have a Cathedral in the centre. The judicial system also shows strong links to a Christian framework. Society is now being shaped differently and is often not connected with religious or spiritual matters like it once was.

Christianity in denial

Being at peace with this seems difficult for some Christians, and I believe this lack of peace to be a handbrake in terms of church and society engagement. Some Christians want Christendom back, or are living as if Christendom still exists - they want control over society, and this is often well intentioned, but in my opinion negatively effects the communication of the church.

My list of 9 perceptions of how people outside the church see the church is the result of Christendom influencing society over a very long time. These perceptions indicate why it's probably a good thing that Christendom is over. Today the church is often not viewed favourably by those not part of it.

Being at peace with secularisation allows me to encourage those with whom I share Christian faith, as we together be the body of Christ in this secular society we live in. This allows us to demonstrate what being Christian is about in ways not defined by the tradition of Christendom, which for various reasons has contributed to society's dislike of the church.

The key point here being my expression of Christian spirituality is to be a demonstration rather than instruction or dictation.

Christendom is over

The time when the church was able to instruct and dictate society into the Christian framework is over. Therefore the church's engagement with society must not include instruction about how society should be.

Can you think of examples where the church is seen as trying to instruct how society should be, rather than perhaps radically demonstrating how it could be? (please share in the comments below).

Embrace secularisation

I embrace secularisation and see opportunities for the church everywhere. Secularisation is not evil. Resisting secularisation and striving to turn back the clock, or even pretending Christendom still exists, is a sure way for the church to remain disconnected from society.

The church needs to be at peace with secularisation - once we're free from anxiety and distress about it, we'll be more relaxed and able to focus on being Christian in our current context - to figure out what mission and evangelism means in our current context.

I'm not saying everything about secularisation is good, I'm saying we need to have a healthy appreciation of it in order to be an engaging Christian-faith-community amid it.

I'm not saying Christianity should be removed from the public sphere, I'm saying we need to reinvent our presence in the public sphere so there is no sense of historical authority or entitlement being presented.

Secularisation is good for the church because it allows the church to be the church, rather than trying to manage and control society.

Image: "busy Buchanan Street" Glasgow 27 January 2013 by byronv2 from flickr.com CC.

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Why secularisation is good for the church - Mike Crudge

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One of the outcomes of my research on church and society has been to help church people see how something is different now in terms of the church and its place and engagement with society. I have used the concept of Christendom/post-Christendom as one way to illustrate this.

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This article explores the economic foundations of China and how it has changed and continues to change. The first leader of Communist China, Mao Zedong, wanted to establish a completely Communist nation founded on the principles of Marxism of "agricultural collectivisation and nationalised industrialisation." Unfortunately, under Mao millions of Chinese people lived in poverty. Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping implemented a lot of reforms that helped lift "800 million people'' out of poverty. These reforms implemented policies that were Capitalistic, encouraging the sale of surplus crops for profit and forign trade and investment. Deng created a Chinese economic policy that was more "Communist-Capitalist" than purely Communist. The current leader of China Xi Jinping, unlike Deng, wants to return China's economic policies to how they were under Mao, adhering to more traditional Marxist ideology.

Do you think that Communist-Capitalism is possible? Is Communist-Capitalism a beneficial economic system? Would a purely Communist economic system be effective in preventing poverty and establishing stability? What about a purely Capitalist economic system?

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China has evolved from an impoverished nation into an economic superpower during the past seven decades of Communist Party power.

The most populous country on the planet now has "an economy on course to topple the US as the world's biggest", said Bloomberg. But China's economic transformation has also raised questions about the extent to which the regime has adhered to socialist economic policy.

Impoverished past

After taking power in 1949, then party leader Mao Zedong sought to boost China's economy through agricultural collectivisation and nationalised industrialisation.

But "by Mao's death in 1976, it was clear these reforms had failed", said the BBC. His social and economic campaign resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese citizens, "easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded", said The Washington Post.

However, extensive reforms introduced by Mao's successor, Deng Xiaoping, began China's transformation from "an impoverished nation into a global economic powerhouse", said The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Deng brought collective farming to an end, and allowed farmers to sell surplus crops for profit. Foreign trade and investment were encouraged, and investors were given tax concessions in return for revenue and technical knowledge in special economic zones (SEZs) in Southern China.

"Never before in history have so many people escaped poverty in such a short time," said Forbes.

Since 1978, China's gross domestic product growth has averaged almost 10% a year, and more than 800m people "have been lifted out of poverty", according to the World Bank. The country is now the world's biggest exporter, while on the domestic front, significant improvements have been made in health, education and other key services.

Capitalism's role

The Chinese Communist Party "still describes 'the realisation of communism' as its highest ideal", and maintains that China is not a capitalist state, said the WSJ. But in practice, its leaders "have long embraced capitalist methods and encouraged entrepreneurship".

In 1980, with de-collectivisation already under way, would-be industrialists across the country started to set up small-scale businesses. The creation of SEZs - where "capitalist experiments were permitted" - accelerated "the increasing erosion" of the social systems of public ownership and a state-managed economy, said Forbes.

Deng had spotted "a gap in the market of ideas", wrote Tomasz Kamusella, a reader in modern history at Scotland's University of St Andrews, in an article at The Conversation. The Chinese ruler realised "that you can have capitalism without democracy", Kamusella continued, "meaning that capitalism was ideologically neutral and could serve the needs of a communist regime".

The policies enacted under Deng "kick-started the stagnant economy" and encouraged investment from foreign firms, said the BBC. As capital continues to flood into China's bond and equity markets, the Asian nation last year overtook the US to become the top destination for foreign direct investment, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Current state of play

"Communism is alive and well in China," according to political scientist Thitinan Pongsudhirak, "but with capitalist characteristics".

While China is politically totalitarian, with free speech under tight control, its economy is now "market-consistent, if not market-driven", wrote Pongsudhirak, a professor at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, in an article in the Bangkok Post.

Kamusella on The Conversation agreed that under China's unique economic model, "communist-capitalism is not an oxymoron any more", so long as entrepreneurs and enterprises are subservient to the political order. And now "the often touted hypothesis about capitalism's democratising effects must be put to the test".

In Europe, "pro-authoritarian leaders are enamoured with Chinese economic and political success" and "hope to establish privileged links and collaboration with the communist superpower", Kamusella wrote.

"The ideological struggle of the 20th century between the 'free world' versus 'the socialist-communist' camp is ongoing," said Pongsudhirak. But "the struggle now features the United States-led Western alliance versus the China-centric global network of nations with authoritarian tendencies."

The question then, said Kamusella, is "now that capitalism is the engine of China's economy, what is communism today?"

A new era of economic socialism?

Since taking over leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in 2013, Xi Jinping has been "trying to roll back China's decades-long evolution toward Western-style capitalism", said the WSJ 's chief China correspondent Lingling Wei. At a meeting of the party's central committee in November, a resolution was passed that defined President Xi's system of thought as "Marxism of the 21st century".

For a long time, a policy of socialism "with Chinese characteristics" allowed the ruling regime "massive philosophical leeway to run a society which, in many ways, was not very socialist at all", said the BBC. Now, Xi is pursuing a policy of "common prosperity".

"In Mr Xi's opinion, private capital now has been allowed to run amok," said the WSJ's Lingling, and he is now "trying forcefully to get China back to the vision of Mao Zedong".

When his party celebrated its centenary in July, Xi "donned a Mao suit and stood behind a podium adorned with a hammer and sickle, pledging to stand for the people", she continued. "Such gestures, once dismissed as political stagecraft, are being taken more seriously by China watchers as it becomes evident Mr. Xi is more ideologically driven than his immediate predecessors."

Xi has reportedly told fellow party members that the difference between his vision and Western-style capitalism is that in China, "capital serves the people". Under his policies, he has claimed, low-incomes will be boosted, more citizens will join the middle-income social tier, and high earners will face a greater level of taxation.

There should be "no doubt" that the most rigorous socio-economic change since those brought in under Deng's leadership "is now under way," said Time. And the move could have "huge repercussions for the rest of the world", said the BBC 's Asia correspondent Karishma Vaswani.

"A sort of top-down Utopian China", the Communist Party now hopes to offer a "viable alternative model" to Western capitalism, wrote Vaswani. But "it does come with a catch: even more control and power in the hands of the party".

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China has evolved from an impoverished nation into an economic superpower during the past seven decades of Communist Party power. The most populous country on the planet now has "an economy on course to topple the US as the world's biggest", said Bloomberg.

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In this video, John Cage, an experimental musician, performs a piece of music called "Water Walk." Cage is a composer and music theorist that is known for his extremely unconventional pieces of music. His most famous piece, "4:33," is four minutes and thirty-three seconds of a musician sitting at a piano without playing anything. In "Water Walk" Cage uses various household objects to produce sounds at calculated times. Although this piece sounds like random noises, every element of the music was specifically planned out. In the original piece Cage was supposed to turn on the radios, but the television station would not allow the radios to be plugged in because of a union dispute; because of this, Cage hit the radios and pushed them off the table instead. Cage challenges the traditional expectations and definitions of music and emphasizes through his pieces that music does not have to conform to the traditional ideals of what music should be.
Does Cage's use of experimental music techniques demonstrate a postmodern way of thinking? If so, how?
How did the audience in the video react to Cage's music? Do you think this is similar to how some people react to postmodern ideologies?
Should there be a set standard or definition for what music is or can music be anything?

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In the past, we have witnessed the shift away from unquestioned belief in Christian doctrine and morality because of the secularization of Western culture. Even in an increasingly secular modern society, however, there was still a relatively prominent divide between a secular atheist worldview and a Christian worldview. With the rise of postmodernism, forming a worldview has become more about conforming one's beliefs to the accepted beliefs of the culture than holding fast to traditional beliefs and doctrines. I have attached this study done by The State of Theology this year that surveyed Christians and non-Christians on their beliefs on core doctrines of Christianity. This study is very interesting while also, in my opinion, disheartening. If you click on the tab at the top that says Data Explorer you can see more survey questions and you can filter through the statistics by different variables. One of the statements that they had people agree or disagree with is "Religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth." Shockingly, out of the professing Christians surveyed, 60% agreed with this statement. Because of the influence of postmodernism, faith is no longer what one believes is absolutely true, but rather what one wants to believe or think. While 62% of Christians agreed that "The Bible is the highest authority for what I believe," this belief is not evident in many of the other answers. When given the statement "God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam," 67% of Christians agreed that one does not actually have to be a Christian to worship God. 53% of Christians surveyed agree that "Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God." Although Ephesians 2:3 clearly states that we "were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind" 70% of Christians surveyed believe that "everyone is born innocent in the eyes of God." The results of this survey demonstrate the impact that postmodern thought has had on Christianity.
What are your thoughts on this survey?
How do you think that postmodern thought has influenced Christian beliefs?
Is it okay to deviate from Christian doctrines that are outlined in Scripture?
What other factors could have influenced the results of this survey?