an introduction
becoming, contingency, relativity, and chance. They are generally
opposed to metaphysics and ontological foundations for things of the
world. They are convinced that there are no timeless or universal truths,
although some accept a multiplicity of truths. Knowledge is always
incomplete, fragmented, and victim to historical and cultural forces
beyond the control of anyone. The individual person is a decentered,
fragmented, unstable, erring, wandering, decadent, and liminal being liv-
ing on the fringes of society. The iconoclastic spirit of postmodernism is
political and revolutionary, and leads to discontinuity, rupture, irregular-
ity, plurality, and experimental adventures within a realm of the simula-
crum, a hyper-reality that simulates life.
From the postmodern perspective of Jacques Derrida, religion is a
response to the other before the presence of the other and oneself. In this
encounter, God serves as a witness in the sense that God is already there,
as prior to being itself. Derrida summarizes this stating: “Everything
begins with the presence of that absence.” (Derrida 1998: 27) This pres-
ence/absence is God, an unnamable witness. Looking at the origin of the
Latin term for religion, one can find that it is applied to foreign things.
As a response, religion is both ambiguous and ambivalent. It is preferable
to understand religion as an ellipsis (a mark of absence), suggesting that
religion is elusive and difficult to grasp with any precision or certainty.
Along these lines of observation, another postmodern thinker, Mark C.
Taylor, points to the elusive nature of religion because its subject matter is
constantly slipping from one’s grasp. What makes religion so difficult to grasp
is that it is continually withdrawing from the seeker. Religion disappears in its
coming to be, but it yet allows appearances to emerge in its continual with-
drawal. Thus religion is neither really here nor some place else. Because of its
slippery nature, it is difficult to know precisely where to look for religion with
any certainty; it could even appear in its withdrawal in strange places. In a
later book, Taylor makes an effort to define the elusive nature of religion:
Religion is an emergent, adaptive network of symbols, myths, and
rituals that, on the one hand, figure schemata of feeling, thinking, and
acting in ways that lend life meaning and purpose and, on the other
hand, disrupt, dislocate, and disfigure every stabilizing structure.
(M. Taylor 2007: 12)Religion is akin to a double-edged sacrificial knife that gives people
meaning and a sense of purpose, while undermining the stability of
human existence with its destructive aspect.
In addition to postmodern discussions of religion, the latest approach is
applying the findings from cognitive science to the study of religion, which