Contours of Culture
Trinity & Modernity
by Ken Myers
We have been told that to be postmodern is to approach metanarratives—the Big Stories that explain Life, the Universe, and Everything—with incredulity. Of course, this raises the question of whether or not this definition of the postmodern temperament is itself a metanarrative, but I'll leave that for finer minds than mine to explore.
Possible paradoxes notwithstanding, I have to give grudging credit to Jean-François Lyotard for making this observation, because I do detect among most younger people a yawning indifference to efforts to explain history or theology or ethics or art in terms of grand and arching chronologies or chronicles. I suspect their minds and hearts have been colonized by thousands of what Lyotard called petits récits, small accounts of highly particular and often idiosyncratic episodes, all blithely disconnected from any framework, all resistant to organization in any structure of meaning. Perpetual exposure to a numbing torrent of bewildering bursts of narrativish fragments—increasingly in fewer than 140 characters—leaves little time or mental space for attending to connections and causality.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Ken Myers is the host and producer of the Mars Hill Audio Journal. Formerly an arts editor with National Public Radio, he also served as editor of Eternity, the Evangelical monthly magazine, and This World, the quarterly predecessor to First Things. He also serves as music director at All Saints Anglican Church in Ivy, Virginia. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on literature from the online archives
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
on Costly Grace in Breece D'J Pancake's Flyover Country by Casey Chalk
32.2—March/April 2019
Misguided Mercy & Dante's Infernal Purgation by Joshua Hren
30.2—March/April 2017
on Reading Don Quixote in Its Original Christian Context by Luis Cortest
more from the online archives
31.6—November/December 2018
Victimhood Culture Scapegoats Its Very Source by Michael P. Foley
14.6—July/August 2001
Three Bad Ideas for Women & What to Do About Them by Frederica Mathewes-Green
22.6—July/August 2009
on the Integration of Anger into the Virtuous Life by Leon J. Podles
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
