With the postmodern turn in the
university have come various new methodologies.
These need to be understood as a shift from the dominance of the
sciences during Modernity to the dominance of the social sciences during Postmodernity. The Enlightenment opposed
reason to belief and science to faith.
Christians could relate somewhat well to the university in Modernity by
affirming the correspondence between truth and fact. Now, in this postmodern turn, various challenges
arise from a belief that truth is locally constructed, relative, and merely
functional (political). Aspects of
postmodern presuppositions are evident in the following methodologies. Research from a Christian tradition finds
many points of conflict with these new approaches.
Critical Theory uses theories of social Marxism to understand and
work to overcome social structures that oppress (or are believed to oppress) vulnerable
and disenfranchised groups. CT is a
reaction to traditional theory, which
affirms a transcendental epistemology; that is, CT rejected a correspondence between
truth and fact (of a thought to a thing), especially in ethics, and theories
that were non-historical. Seeking revolutionary
change, not some implementation of truth, CT is epistemologically and morally
relativistic and pragmatic, having no place for the objectivism that belief in ‘God’
introduces into one’s worldview. The
‘critical’ and Marxist element of CT has to do with seeing social institutions
as oppressive and people as vulnerable victims in need of emancipation. It seeks to be pragmatic and relativistic and
to understand the world in terms of the power relationships of various groups. The landscape of CT has been surveyed by key
thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse,
Habermas), Antonio Gramsci, and Sigmund Freud.
Various critical theories operating towards the end of liberation are
liberation theology, feminism, black theology, critical race theory,
post-colonialism (in certain authors), and queer or trans theory. The Marxist origins of CT prioritise the
social sciences in academic study and continue to exert an anti-religious bias,
but twentieth century social Marxism is more destructive than constructive as
it lacks Marx’s utopianism. Thus, CT-inspired
activists seek to ‘march through the social institutions’ to undermine them,
but without any religious, especially any Christian, perspective. It embraces violent action on behalf of
perceived or real victims in society in order to bring about change that is yet
to be understood. While attacking
structures of power, it still embraces power and suppression as a means of liberation. To this end, it favours anarchy followed by
socialism in the sense of a powerful state enforcing social change.
Posthumanism is a philosophical conceptualisation that not only
removes God as the subject but also humans and replaces them with nonhuman
agents (animals, environment), or removes persons and replaces them with
practices. It is a rejection of the
Jewish-Christian understanding of humanity as bearers of God’s image.
Post-qualitative research accepts the existentialist notion that
existence precedes essence. (There is no
God-given, human identity.) It sees
identity as a product of entangled existence with others in a constant process
of reformation. The perspective rejects
objectivity and binary oppositions.
Decoloniality entails replacing the Modernist university’s objective,
scientific approach to research with the subjective experiences and thinking of
the ‘colonised.’ It deconstructs
perceived colonial control, including reason and analytic approaches, any
exercise of European power in thinking and doing, and the dominance of Western
civilization. It elevates socioeconomic
and political interpretations that oppose the West. By making colonialism the dominant category
in a binary analysis of culture, including academics and religion, it is
vulnerable to the charge of being inadequately analytical and critical.
Affective methodology highlights, as the name implies, feelings and
emotions, such as love, disgust, and desire, in research. It is intended to be a rejection of
objective, dispassionate, value free, and disembodied research. The researcher is not an objective observer
but an active participant in a study.
This is a helpful challenge to modernity’s scientific objectivity, but
in its postmodern iteration, it provides no faith-tradition by which to assess
feelings and emotions. To illustrate, in
one, recent form of this approach, ‘living in love’ has been used to reject
convictions about sexuality, gender, and marriage in the Church of England. The emotion, love, is self-affirming and
indiscriminate.
Vulnerable methodology highlights the vulnerability of subjects
being researched. Particular areas of
vulnerability are cognitive or communicative, institutional, medical, economic,
and social. Researchers are expected to
follow protocols that recognise and protect against their subjects’
vulnerabilities.
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