Is Worldview Thought Still Relevant?

Author's Note: The follow article was published yesterday in The Worldview Bulletin - a tremendous resource with links to contemporary news, articles, and worldview thoughts by leading authors and thinkers.  I invite and encourage you to check them out and subscribe to their bulletins and newsletters - Worldview Bulletin link 

The Contemporary Importance of Worldview Thought

Since the first-edition publication of James Sire’s The Universe Next Door in 1976, worldview thought has been a prominent fixture in western evangelicalism.  Christian leaders and teachers have acknowledged the tremendous benefits that worldview awareness and analysis provides in discipleship and spiritual growth, resulting in a veritable boom in Christian worldview exploration and publication—Walsh & Middleton’s The Transforming Vision; Goheen & Bartholomew’s Living at the Crossroads; Wilkens & Sanford’s Hidden Worldviews; Myers & Noebel’s Understanding the Times; Sire’s Naming the Elephant; the list goes on.  Worldview-oriented ministries have also blossomed—Summit Ministries; Probe; Worldview Academy; Leadership University, etc. 

But the rising prominence of worldview thought has also prompted skepticism and opposition from a range of Christian thinkers—including the influential public intellectual James K. A. Smith at Calvin College.  Critics charge that “traditional worldview studies” are reductionistic, and “lack explanatory power and often misinterpret people.” (Noble, A Disruptive Witness, 52-53) For his part, Smith’s primary charge is that worldview is overly rationalistic, and miss the reality that human habits (virtues) are shaped not by right thinking but by right loves/liturgy (see Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 17ff; idem., Imagining the Kingdom, 9ff).   

What Is Worldview? Part III - Engaging James Sire

What Is Worldview: James Sire, Dean of Worldview Thought

James Sire is arguably the most influential evangelical worldview proponent over the past two generations. Given my interest in worldview studies (as exemplified in our recently-published An Introduction to Christian Worldview, with IVP Academic), I think it is healthy and important to understand what Sire has written on worldview over the past 40 years, and to build upon his wisdom. His classic text, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog, first published in 1976, is currently in its fifth edition. The first three editions focused on worldview as primarily a set of basic concepts or intellectual presuppositions. After rethinking his approach, Sire thoroughly revised his understanding and explanation of worldview. Sire no longer understands or explains worldview in terms of philosophical propositions alone. Instead, he provides a comprehensive and holistic definition:

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being. [James W. Sire, Naming the Elephant: Worldview as a Concept, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015), 13.]

Sire’s definition is helpful on several levels and deserves to be unpacked.

What Is a Worldview? Part 1

What Is a Worldview? Stories & A Definition

Excerpted from Anderson, Clark, and Naugle, An Introduction to Christian Worldview (IVP Academic, 2017), 8-9. (To be released October 12, 2017.)

Three friends once went to a nature preserve in the African Serengeti and experienced the majestic beauty and diversity of native African wildlife—zebra, elephant, gazelle, lion, and rhinoceros. Each was awestruck by the diversity of creatures observed.

The first friend, John Luther, commented boldly: “The Lord God has definitely created an amazing array of creatures that sing his praises and declare his glory to the ends of the earth, has he not?”

The second friend, Charles Dawkins, immediately responded: “An amazing array of creatures, to be sure. But you err, my good man, in ascribing their existence to a Creator. No, these incredible animals are the result of the unguided, purposeless combination of random mutation and natural selection. We too are the product of a natural evolutionary process. Indeed, we are no different from the creatures that we see.”

The third friend, Shirley Chopra, serenely replied: “I pray you both would be enlightened to the full reality disclosed by our brothers and sisters on the nature preserve. For they too bear the same spark of divinity that lies within you and me. Do you not sense them calling to you, seeking to communicate with your spirit? We are all potential gods and goddesses; we just need to awaken to our heightened state and take hold of the possibilities that lie before us.”

The three friends see the same animals within the same nature preserve. Thus, they experience the same objective truth. Nevertheless, due to their vastly different perspectives, the three friends see different things.