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Responding to the vibe shift: a fourfold typology of emerging post-secular worldviews

The last few years have witnessed a ‘vibe shift’ in Western culture against radical secularity and in favor of religion, spirituality, and morality. Significant former atheists like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, her husband and award-winning historian Niall Ferguson, and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, have publicly converted to Christianity. This paper proposes a typology of four emerging post-secular worldviews: liberty, morality, religion, and spirituality. These ideal-types are heuristic tools intended to help Christian leaders recognise emerging forms of thought which may prejudice people against the gospel yet can be reinterpreted to become pathways into the faith. The four types are organised along two axes: individualism vs. collectivism, and supernaturalism vs. naturalism. The persuasive significance of these patterned beliefs will be analysed using categories of worldview (James Sire, Norm Geisler et. al.), social imaginary (Charles Taylor) and enculturation (Edward Tylor, Paul Hiebert et. al.). The particular characteristics of each type of belief, and their distinctions from the other three, will be defined in dialogue with relevant literature. Liberty analyses how the cyberworld denigrates physical limitations and forms people – particularly young people – to expect a ‘liquid’ (Zygmunt Bauman), anarchic anthropology with an infinitely malleable self – see e.g. Samuel James’s Digital Liturgies and Tony Reinke’s God, Technology, and the Christian Life. Morality considers the other extreme: a renewed longing for individual and social order, inspired by non-Christians like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland who seek to retain Christian ethics without their supernatural foundations. Religion reflects on how recent global expressions of ethno-nationalism have invoked a specific tradition of belief in the supernatural – a particular ‘religion’ – as a society’s central unificative principle in ways which consciously or unconsciously endorse theocracy. And spirituality draws on the work of French Catholic philosopher Chantal Delsol and US Reformed theologian Michael Horton’s recent project on the ‘divine self’ to examine the recent revival of paganism, which, through a monistic cosmology, locates divine authority within the subject and thereby encourages the proliferation of individuated, bespoke forms of supernatural beliefs. The nature of each belief type will be theologically evaluated using Tim Keller’s threefold pattern of resonance, dissonance, and resolution. Each type of belief holds certain convictions which overlap with evangelical, Protestant Christianity. But each one also disagrees with the gospel in critical ways which renders it, when considered as an integrated whole, non-Christian or even anti-Christian. But the gospel can fulfil the aspirations of each type of belief in surprisingly satisfying ways which can form and strengthen Christian faith, identification, and behaviour.

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Recent Publications

The Spirit and Renewal (Part 1): Definitive & Progressive Sanctification - Sherif Fahim

'New Creation' in Paul - Sherif Fahim

Justification, Sanctification, and Union with Christ: Fresh Insights from Calvin, Westminster, and Walter Marshall - Sherif Fahim

Death in Second-Century Christian Thought The Meaning of Death in Earliest Christianity - Jeremiah Mutie

The Quest for Early Church Historiography From Ferdinand C. Baur to Bart D. Ehrman and Beyond - Jeremiah Mutie

The Book of the Twelve - David Fuller

Early Witnesses to the Syriac Text of Acts 15 with an Investigation into the Text of Acts 15 in the Didascalia Apostolorum and with and Appendix on the Western/Jacobite Peshitta Manuscript Tradition for Acts - Daniel McConaughy

The Star and the Magi in Jacob of Serugh and the Early Syriac Tradition - Daniel McConaughy

Saved by Grace through Faith or Saved by Decree? A Biblical and Theological Critique of Calvinist Soteriology - Geoffrey Robinson

The Rhetoric of Matthean “Small Faith” - Christopher Seglenieks

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