Sunday, August 22, 2004
(5:05 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
More on Worldviews
There has been some reaction to my poll on worldviews, both in a CRI discussion thread and at The H is O. I have long detested the word worldview, largely because of its association with the idea of a "Christian worldview." I am starting to wonder, however, if the incomprehension that often meets my hatred of the term "worldview" represents a failure of the listener or if my ideas simply don't make sense.Let me say first off that I really don't care either way about the term worldview as a technical term in sociology. It may be, as Amardeep said, a lazy way to classify people, but all classification schemes are probably lazy at the end of the day. The problem comes when Christians start using it, and it has seriously been a major point in Christian apologetics, especially of the more intellectually refined variety, for quite some time now. Dennis Bratcher describes the term as follows in the CRI thread:
I’m not sure what burr got under your intellectual saddle on the issue of worldview, but I think you have seriously misunderstood what the concept describes. It is interesting that most sociologists have no problem with the term, since it does describe a sociological phenomenon. I think you have confused an emotional reaction to the idea of a “Christian” worldview promoted by some, with the perfectly valid sociological description of how people view the world. This is not, as you suggest, simply how some people choose to “see” the world around them, as if it had anything to do with the eyes and the brain. Rather, it is “a set of presuppositions (or assumptions) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world.” (Sires, p. 17). It is adopted, or absorbed, from the culture of which we are a part (or technically, in which we are socialized).This is all fine with me. But what the fuck does it have to do with evangelical Christianity? Here we have a branch of Christianity that, more than most, emphasizes conscious assent to an explicit set of beliefs, and they're talking about those beliefs using a sociological term that refers to the largely unconscious ideas we have about the world that only become an issue when we meet others who don't share those views. The term "Christian worldview," as it is actually used, seems to me to ally the gospel with a certain kind of cultural imperialism that is precisely a rejection of alternate ways of thinking, rather than a way to reach out to them and live in relation with them (at best, it is a way to understand those other ways of thinking so as to change them).
These assumptions include basic questions about how the world exists and how human beings fit into that world. In most instances people do not realize that they have a world view and cannot articulate it if asked. That is because those assumptions are truly assumptions, the “givens” for how they construe and make sense of the world. That simply means that without deliberate effort they cannot comprehend or even conceptualize any other assumptions. It is only when they are confronted with differing assumptions that the issue is even presented, which is why “worldview” is an important topic when speaking of cross-cultural communication.
Okay, I have to go now. If you care, I think you should read M. Gauche's comments in the post for the original poll, which more directly address current usage of the term "worldview" among Christians.
