Some good thoughts but I am struck by how people frequently chastise “moderns” for coming up with neat little categories and then use the same kind of labels and categories themselves. Some people who refer to themselves as postmodern (I am not assuming you are, KW Leslie) don’t seem to be aware that they do the same kind of sizing up others with labels. It sounds like we are all agreeing that the worldview concept can become an excuse for oversimplification but I still think it can be helpful for defining broad parameters of questions and beliefs. If the worldview concept is not useful then I doubt whether the criticisms offered of worldviews are anthing more than individuals or groups misunderstanding other individuals and groups. By the way, I heard David Naugle say that your view of worldviews is also part of your worldview.

The trouble is that now been this map has been handed down and altered through successive generations of evangelicals and now has been shrunk down into a postage stamp map. This postage stamp is then presented as an effective road map to get you from Portland, Oregon to Mukilteo, Washington.

There’s a sense in which Schaeffer should not necessarily bear the blame of lazy sods who weren’t willing to do what he did. Schaeffer’s example should have been the starting point, not the end point of an evangelicals actual engagement of the arts as a whole.

Or, to put it another way, South Park still has it right in the episode “Christian Rock Hard”.

I hold Schaeffer in high regard. I had the privilege of being at L’Abri in the 70s and Schaeffer not only called me back to Christ but opened up many doors to appreciating art and culture. For this I will always be grateful. That being said, I do think there is a systemic problem (not just a matter of words) with a worldview approach. When I got back from L’Abri, I would sometimes sit down with friends and tell them what various artists were trying to say through their art from their worldview. As you can imagine, I was quickly corrected. It became clear to me that I really knew very little about art. It seems to me that a worldview approach has this powerful seduction, and hence we should abandon it. It seduces us into believing we can understand without listening. I wouldn’t go so far as to say worldview talk never had any good use. At this time, however, when we (at least Evangelicals) are seen as being either arrogant or defensive and seem to have real difficulty in talking to the world around us, worldview talk creates more problems than it solves.

But, still, “worldview” CAN be used in simple, modest, but effective ways.

I suppose my real objection is based on the philosophical underpinnings of worldview talk. To over simplify a bit, worldview talk leaves us with competing systems. Each worldview is a fortress. It can’t be criticized because it’s within the worldview that the rules for criticism are defined. The benefit is that Christianity, as a worldview, is unassailable. That benefit comes at a cost. We can’t get outside of the fortress and speak with those in the world as fellow human beings.

At another level, the use of violence by film-makers like John Woo and Paul Verhoeven is instructive, especially when we consider that the first considers himself Protestant and the second is an atheist. Only one of those two directors decided it was necessary to make an action movie where the man who lived by the sword should actually die by the sword instead of riding off into the sunset with the hooker with a heart of gold. I don’t think worldview comparisons are at all wrong at that point, of course I wonder how many Christians hammering the worldview approach would watch Total Recall and The Killer these days.

But about your comments on whether postmodernism exists: It actually doesn’t, not as a worldview. It’s too inconsistent to be a coherent worldview. But that’s where the worldivew idea falls apart. The assumption Colson/Pearcey makes is that everyone has a worldview, and shape it to be internally consistent so that they can use it as a lens to interpret the world around them. “Pomos” don’t think that way. They embrace whatever philosophies sound good to them at the time. If it’s a behavior they approve of (like recycling) everyone should do it, and they’re very intolerant of those who don’t. If it’s a behavior they could take or leave, they suddenly believe in freedom of choice — and ironically are very intolerant of those who aren’t so open-minded as they are. It’s a very open-ended belief system, with weird little combinations of subjective truth (”Whatever works for you, dude”) and objective truth (”Meat is murder, dude”) and appeals to logic or emotion depending on which is more convenient for the occasion.

Moderns (which include a lot of Christians) find it maddening because worldview studies are shorthand for how to categorize and thus deal with people in generalities. They demand some level of consistency. “Pomos” are inconsistent by nature. They’re too complex and have to be figured out and evangelized on a case-by-case basis. You can’t use traditional evangelism and apologetics tactics on them. You have to get to know them, and share Jesus with them through your personal lifestyle. This sounds to me exactly like the sort of thing Jesus would do, so I often wonder why the worldview fans see postmoderns as such a concerning, even frightening, problem. The same Holy Spirit who cut through all my horse-manure still cuts through theirs.

For me, “rethinking” worldview has involved lifting it out of the sphere of apologetics and trying to situate it within the context of sanctification, so it’s more about the mind of Christ and a life of faithfulness, less about the false assumptions underlying other people’s perspectives and more about the often shaky footings of my own.