The last year has seen an overwhelming number of think-pieces and public reflections on the collapse of facts. Indeed, even for the most casually engaged individual, the term “post-truth” has gained an undeniable familiarity within the collective lexicon. We have been reminded with ever-increasing frequency that despite legions of assembled “fact checkers,” the public seems all too willing to give “[itself] over to all kinds of magical thinking, anything-goes relativism, and belief in fanciful explanation—small and large fantasies that console or thrill or terrify us.”
While much of this analysis has focused upon the populist and ideological reasons for the embrace of post-truth in the political arena, few seem to have noticed the ways in which our “post-truth” reality has disrupted our religious communities and the very act of thinking theologically. Continue Reading…