Member-only story
Historicism: On Knowing That We Are Making It Up
Many of us of a liberal theological bent consider religions in the category of stuff human beings in our communal groupings have made up over the millennia in order to survive and thrive on this planet.
Human ideas are socially and historically “conditioned.” Philosophies and religions — and the truths and gods they claim — are “true” because they have worked for actual human beings in the face of very real, very daunting, even impossible, circumstances.
From this perspective, “true” means it works.
For me, it’s difficult to imagine “reality” being any other way.
For example, imagining that the religious tradition I was born into — Oneness Pentecostalism — is anything other than an early-twentieth century rejoinder to the Modernist movement in religion minimizes the sheer audacity of Oneness Pentecostalism’s claims. (For a classic rejoinder to Modernism, read this.)
Sure, Oneness Pentecostalism — and the entire experience of the Azusa Street Revival — can be “explained” by reference to social and religious conditions in the early-twentieth century, but what happened is so much more than mere reaction for or against or reference to the swinging of a social pendulum.
