by Harley Schlanger, LaRouche Organization: Between ongoing wars and military confrontations, and the threat of more to come, politics in the U.S. is erupting into both a highly polarized partisan battle, and nasty splits within the parties, e.g., the brawl between Pres. Trump and Rep. MTG, and Tucker Carlson vs. Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro.  […]

November 25, 2025 — Today's Conservative Cartoon

Oakland’s groove metal pioneers will be playing some extensive sets when they return in the spring

Metamodernism is our cultural moment and has been since the late ’90s, and especially since September 11, 2001—a date that put the final nail in the coffin of postmodernism. Most normal people don’t use and will never use the term “metamodernism.” But that doesn’t mean they aren’t living the reality of it, carrying the disposition that metamodernism describes. What’s that disposition? You can read Luke Turner’s influential essay for a concise overview, or the piece I wrote last year on the “metamodern mood” and its implications for the church. Metamodernism is what came after postmodernism, which is what came after modernism. But metamodernism doesn’t simply want to replace modernism and postmodernism; it seeks a synthesis or integration of the two, with the metamodern mood constantly oscillating or toggling between modern and postmodern postures. Once you understand metamodernism, you start to see it everywhere—in pop culture, in politics, in how we talk and think. Let’s consider some dynamics of metamodern Christianity that will be important for church leaders to understand and address. Specifically, we’ll drill down into one big challenge and one big opportunity I’m seeing. Challenge: Bespoke Spirituality Some people who talk about metamodernism want to characterize metamodern Christianity as a kind of new pinnacle of learning, where we’ve taken all that’s come before and arrived at a new height of enlightenment in how we view God and reality. But I think metamodernism generally, including metamodern Christianity, is closer to a new pinnacle of consumerism. It’s not that we’re brilliantly synthesizing all the periods and philosophies that came before us (because most of us don’t know enough of that history to be able to synthesize it anyway); rather, we’re increasingly comfortable picking the bits and pieces we like from different eras and cobbling together our own custom “bespoke spirituality.” This kind of à la carte religion resists buying into an entire, cohesive system. It prefers a salad-bar approach: a little bit of Baptist theology, a little bit of Anglican liturgy, a smidge of Catholic aesthetics, and a splash of Pentecostal worship energy. There’s a new phenomenon called “aesthetic conversion,” which is very metamodern. You see it often with twentysomething graduates of evangelical colleges who grew up Baptist or nondenominational but, after college, feel drawn to the more aesthetically pleasing vibes and tradition of Anglicanism, Orthodoxy, or Catholicism. I recently heard a story of an Anglican church full of former Baptists, many of whom had young children or babies. When the priest announced the opportunity for infant baptisms, however, none of these new converts signed up. They had retained their Baptist conviction on adult baptism, even as they’d ditched the Baptist vibe for the Anglican aesthetic. Aesthetic conversions and bespoke spirituality are byproducts of our new media environment. Online life presents us with an unprecedented array of spiritual expressions, traditions, beliefs, and truth claims. We can’t unsee all of this. And if we like what we see, we have FOMO if we’re not allowed to incorporate some of it, in some way, into our personal religious quest. In A Secular Age, Charles Taylor calls this the “nova effect.” It’s the rapid explosion of spiritual options we’re aware of—a trend already in motion prior to but significantly accelerated by the internet. Gone are the days of coherent belief systems we inherit from our parents. Gone are the days of stable religious adherence across time. We’ve simply seen too much. On a daily basis: endless perspectives, countless ways of living, voices who challenge our paradigm or provide options we’ve not considered. And the logic of consumerism—which reached a new pinnacle with the invention of the iPhone—conditions us to assume reality is ours to curate and filter as we see fit. Gone are the days of coherent systems of belief we inherit from our parents. Gone are the days of stable religious adherence across time. We’ve simply seen too much. Derek Rishmawy summarizes it well when he writes, “Nobody simply inherits packages of beliefs anymore; we choose to believe (and even construct) the packages for ourselves, often as part of our self-actualization project.” This poses a challenge for churches and anyone doing ministry in the metamodern era. How do you build a coherent, unified local church out of individuals used to DIY spirituality? How do you tell the couple who expresses interest in joining your Anglican church that it’s important for them to be convinced of Anglican doctrine, not just attracted to Anglican liturgy? How do you convince a metamodern believer that it’s important to land in a stable set of convictions and a long-term community, rather than frequently and fluidly rethinking beliefs and following one’s ever-oscillating mood? Opportunity: Sincere Desire to Build and Grow For as many challenges as churches face in this new era, there are also significant opportunities. The metamodern generation is hungry for the sort of meaning, purpose, and moral framework Christianity is well positioned to provide. 1. Foundations of Truth That Provide Stable Meaning The post-truth world has become untenable for Gen Z. They’ve grown up with the internet as their gateway to knowledge, but they’ve come to see that nothing is trustworthy and it’s nearly impossible to sift through the glut of information to find kernels of truth. Yet a hyperskeptical, postmodern hermeneutic of suspicion is also untenable. Postmodern nihilism and the relativizing of meaning is untenable. So metamoderns are hungry for truth. Christianity is a good place for truth. We claim to preach and live by the one unassailable truth: God’s Word. As a trusted tradition of truth that has been more or less stable for 2,000 years, Christianity thus holds great appeal for metamodern people. The caveat, however, is that even as metamoderns seek truth and are hungry for something to give their lives real meaning, they also retain their postmodern skepticism and are hyperaware of the ways people wield “truth” as a weapon of control or hypocritically espouse truth without living by it. And so, as we welcome in metamodern truth seekers, we need to do everything we can to build trust with them and model lives of integrity and humility—coherence between our beliefs and our behavior. Metamodern people desire truth. Give it to them. But they also need to see how, in practice and over time, it leads to goodness and beauty. 2. A Telos Toward Which to Build and Solve Problems Postmodern deconstruction—tearing everything down and rejecting modernism’s naive belief in progress—has proven unsatisfying and unsustainable. Metamodern people recognize that it’s in our nature to build, solve problems, and bring order out of chaos. That’s a good starting place for the church to reach them. Christianity offers a compelling telos. For 2,000 years, it has proven to be the greatest-ever catalyst for innovation, progress, and building. Universities, hospitals, the arts, science, literature, and so much more in Western civilization are a direct outgrowth of Christianity’s missional hope. Christianity says, God made the world on purpose, and it’s going somewhere. He made people to be agents of ordering chaos—spreading Eden, bringing more and more of the world into alignment with God’s design for human flourishing. Even as metamoderns seek truth and are hungry for something to give their lives real meaning, they also retain a good bit of postmodern skepticism and are hyperaware of the ways people wield ‘truth’ as a weapon of control. Metamodern people are drawn to a positive vision like this. The internet makes them aware of problems—injustices and suffering everywhere. Yet it leaves them overinformed but underactivated, a combination that leads to angst and anxiety. We’re created for tangible action: to get our hands in the dirt, solving actual problems, ordering actual chaos. This usually means getting involved locally. Local Christian churches provide channels for this. Every church provides opportunities to collaborate to address suffering and order chaos in whatever shape that takes locally, in proximate households and neighborhoods and cities. The caveat is that even if metamodern people might be drawn to Christianity because it gives them a missional purpose and an outlet for their activism, they need to be taught that creedal belief, communal worship, and personal holiness matter too. Before the fruit comes the root, the gospel. Christianity isn’t just about building and doing. It’s about abiding in the vine and receiving a purposeful identity in Christ, rather than trying to achieve it through works. 3. A Moral Framework for Health and Growth The postmodern nihilism and hedonism of the ’80s and ’90s have given way to a desire for meaning and health. It’s interesting that teen pregnancy peaked in the early ’90s and has been going down ever since. Teen alcohol use is down as well. This generation is more mindful of health and betterment; they want programs and guides for flourishing. This is why life-optimization gurus like Jordan Peterson are so popular among young men. It’s why neo-Stoicism is popular among men and wellness is a big value for women. But many of these secular paradigms don’t provide sensible, sustainable frameworks for growth and flourishing. Christianity does. The disciple-making paradigm of Christianity, with a 2,000-year history of changing lives for the better, appeals to metamodern people eager to move beyond nihilistic despair and adopt practices that help them grow. This “pull” also comes with caveats, however. Christianity isn’t just about wellness or bettering your life. Following God’s truth does lead to flourishing, but it won’t inoculate you against suffering. As we welcome in metamoderns looking to improve their lives as part of the Christian community, we have to be honest about the cost of discipleship and challenge people to bear with the nonlinear, bumpy road of sanctification, which can often feel like two steps forward, one step back. Metamodern Revival? Metamoderns long for meaning, purpose, and stable truth, which draws them to modernism. But they also hold on to the postmodern freedom to abruptly shift, rethink, reevaluate, and redirect their interests. The former could be a factor driving Gen Z’s renewed interest in church. But the latter will no doubt be a challenge for durable Christian formation, which requires what Eugene Peterson called “a long obedience in the same direction.” We’ll have to work with metamoderns to cultivate endurance and commitment to the church even when moods shift or troubles come. But be encouraged—there really is hunger out there right now. The vibe shift is real. Gen Z’s return to church and newfound interest in Christianity is a great thing . . . perhaps one of the greatest evangelistic opportunities of the last century. Every revival movement comes with discipleship challenges, but God can shape and use metamodern souls as much as he did postmodern, modern, and premodern souls. In every generation, God is at work, and his gospel grabs people no matter the prevailing cultural mood. In his book The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God, British journalist Justin Brierley opens with a quote from Matthew Arnold’s 1867 poem “Dover Beach,” which is an artifact of modernism and the receding of religious belief that was already accelerating in the Western world: The Sea of Faith Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar . . . If religious faith was in a “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar” in modernism, and that roar hit a crescendo in postmodernism—when faith in anything felt lost—there are signs that metamodernism might be a return of the tide. The metamodern moment seems ripe for revival. Lord, may it be so.

My technology addiction began at an early age. I’d become so focused while staring at the object in my hands that I could block out the raucous chatter on the school bus every day. I carried my favorite technology with me everywhere I went, so I could read a few pages after I finished my classwork. I was a bookworm, and I’ve never recovered. When we think of technology, most of us think of smartphones, robots, and spaceships. Books are technology too. In The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future, Joel Miller, former editor at Thomas Nelson and proprietor of Miller’s Book Review, argues that “the book . . . is one of the most important but overlooked factors in the making of the modern world” (1). Miller doubles down on this assertion, even in an age of AI, space travel, and medical marvels. As any parent of a kid with a hammer knows, technologies change not just what we can do but how we see the world. Books have done that for all of humanity. They “enable us to stack up ideas and see whether they can bear the weight of new associations and connections” (9). Even AI’s seemingly impenetrable neural networks are built on the epistemological foundations laid by books. Books as World Makers The Idea Machine isn’t just a love letter to books that many bibliophiles will enjoy. It fits within the genre of “big history,” where writers show how one invention, idea, or moment reshaped the world. Sometimes those accounts are whimsical, like William Alexander’s Ten Tomatoes That Changed the World. Others, such as Andrew Wilson’s Remaking the World, offer meaningful lessons about our culture’s development. Tracing the macrohistory of the written word requires a definition of “book” that goes beyond the codex—the collection of paper leaves bound together that serves as the Platonic ideal when we moderns use the term. Miller broadly defines the book as “a portable collection of written ideas, designed to elevate the human mind beyond its natural limits of experience, memory, distance, and time” (7). This definition includes my ragged paperback edition of Louis L’Amour’s The Haunted Mesa; it also covers clay tablets, parchment scrolls, and ebook readers. Books allow an author to communicate across the boundaries of time and space. According to Miller, the form books take matters less than their function. As a finished product, books allow an author to communicate across the boundaries of time and space. However, as every author knows, writing itself “encourages the generation of increasingly complex ideas.” Thus, the book enables both the dissemination and creation of “arguments that require separate lines of inquiry, contingent details, proofs and examples [that] can be layered and rearranged to strengthen the claims” (40). Miller is correct as he argues that much of our philosophy, natural science, and theology would be impossible without the book. Christians and Books For Christians, books have never been mere objects; they’ve always been instruments of faith and imagination. We are, as David Lyle Jeffrey persuasively argued, people of the book. Since so much of Western culture rests on Christian foundations, the Bible has played an outsize role in world history—both through its use and abuse. But book culture as we know it has its roots in the soil of Christianity. Literacy has always been a primary concern of Christians. From Jesus reading a scroll in the synagogue (Luke 4:16–21) to Luther’s theses multiplying on the printing press, the written word has shaped Christian imagination. Early Christians even wore miniature codices as religious symbols and so they could read the precious contents wherever they were. Pachomius, founder of the first cenobitic monastery, required literacy for full membership into the community. Miller revisits many of these familiar moments with fresh detail, in many cases unearthing anecdotes that will be unfamiliar to many seasoned readers. Though The Idea Machine goes well beyond the Christian literary culture, that history is an important part of the book’s story. After all, the adoption of the codex may be the best example of Christian’s leading technological change rather than responding to it. It illustrates Miller’s belief that “how we develop and access ideas matters as much as the ideas themselves,” which is a substantial theme within the book (292). Danger of Books In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates makes a case that writing is dangerous. The irony of this argument is that we only have access to it through books. However, Socrates was right about a major danger of the written word.  Miller aptly summarizes Socrates’s warning: “Books convey knowledge but don’t always confer it, so it’s easy for readers to assume they understand ideas better than they do—or pretend as much” (24). For Christians, books have never been mere objects; they’ve always been instruments of faith and imagination. We see this with the way much online research happens. Rather than read entire documents, students (and many internet commentators) often use Ctrl+F to find language that supports their arguments. But now, AI is replacing the need for even those searches. It can generate arguments without requiring researchers to open any books—let alone study them carefully. Miller is more bullish on the future of the book (defined broadly) than I dare to be right now. He rightly notes the power of AI “to do what even entire armies of humans couldn’t” (282). Furthermore, he describes large language models (LLMs) as standing “in a line running from the libraries of Suppiluliuma and Ashurbanipal to Aristotle’s collection and the archivists and catalogers at Alexandria” (293–94). While Miller’s vision is pleasantly hopeful, I’m not as optimistic; Neil Postman’s warnings about the differences between print and screens seem increasingly relevant. AI threatens to create the world Ray Bradbury depicted in Fahrenheit 451, but without the need for firemen. Yet Miller hits the bulls-eye as he shows the power of books to change the world by disrupting the status quo. Books are like adventures; they can make us late for dinner. But they’re also liberating. Books like Sufferings in Africa, the 19th-century account of a ship’s captain enslaved by Arabs, fueled the abolition movement in the United States. Whatever form books take in the future, they’ll always have disruptive potential for good or ill. Screens clamor for our attention. Books merely wait. Yet quiet technologies are often the most effective at changing the world. The Idea Machine is a timely reminder that the oldest tools, wielded well, may be the sharpest.

In 2025, Americans live under unprecedented surveillance. Government agencies and corporations constantly collect data about our daily lives. Step outside and street cameras or license plate readers might log your movements. Use your smartphone and dozens of apps silently track your location and habits. Even at home, “smart” appliances and electric meters can transmit information […]

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