Towards a metamodern academic study of religion and a more religiously informed metamodernism

Abstract

The academic study of religion has long enjoyed a variety of philosophies and methodologies. A new entrant to this list has now arisen: metamodernism. This article examines the claims of metamodernism and makes an initial attempt to relate it to the academic study of religion, both in its guise as Religious Studies and, more tentatively, as the Theological sciences. Metamodernism, with its emphasis on oscillation and simultaneity, shows great promise as an explanatory framework to understand certain current religious developments, such as the ‘Spiritual but not Religious’ phenomenon. It may also assist in creating a growing convergence between the various branches of the academic study of religion.

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Author:
Michel Clasquin-Johnson1
Aliaon:
1Department of Religious
Studies and Arabic, University
of South Africa, South Africa
Corresponding author:
Michel Clasquin-Johnson,
clasqm@unisa.ac.za
Dates:
Received: 12 Dec. 2016
Accepted: 16 Feb. 2017
Published: 24 Apr. 2017
How to cite this arcle:
Clasquin-Johnson, M., 2017,
‘Towards a metamodern
academic study of religion
and a more religiously
informed metamodernism’,
HTS Teologiese Studies/
Theological Studies 73(3),
a4491. hps://doi.
org/10.4102/hts.v73i3.4491
Copyright:
© 2017. The Authors.
Licensee: AOSIS. This work
is licensed under the
Creave Commons
Aribuon License.
Introducon
Metamodernism is the dominant cultural philosophy of the Internet Age. (Abramson 2015c)
... so I never worry when I’m ‘sad’ as the meta modernist in me knows that I will soon oscillate to ecstasy.
(Tweet by Aisha Lëna Shapiro @ciaolena, 20 July 2015)
Postmodernism is over. As global warming, the credit crunch and political instabilities are rapidly taking
us beyond that so prematurely proclaimed ‘End of History’, the postmodern culture of relativism, irony
and pastiche, too, is superseded by another sensibility. One that evokes the will to look forward, that
invokes the will to hope again. (Anonymous 2012a)
In Religious Studies, the most common name these days for the comparative academic study of
religion,1 one does not need to look far to see that we never entirely discard a methodology. We
can still write exegeses of the various religions’ scriptures that would have been entirely
recognisable to F. Max Müller. We can use survey methods borrowed from the social sciences,
analyse religious performances using the playful irony of postmodernism and so on. Bricolage
seems to come naturally to us. Furthermore, we can see a similar range of methodologies in each
religion’s own theological2 discipline.
To this methodological smorgasbord, we may now be able to add yet another approach:
metamodernism.3 This article will present metamodernism as a new approach to life, society and
thought, and ask whether it has something to add to our disciplines and vice versa. I will primarily
approach this issue from a Religious Studies perspective, but there are implications for Theology
as well. Indeed, one of the possible effects of a metamodern perspective that we shall explore
below will be a reconsideration of the boundaries between these disciplines and their roles in the
overall academic study of religion.4
The term ‘metamodernism’ has a prehistory: we can see the term being used with various shades
of meaning attached to it as far back as 1975 (Carruth 1986; Haig 1991; Koutselini 1997; McCloskey
1992; Stambler 2004; Truitt 2006; Valiande & Koutselini 2009; Zavarzadeh 1975), with none of
these using the term precisely as it is used today. However, it is generally agreed that
metamodernism as we understand it today arose in 2010 when Vermeulen and Van den Akker
published their article Notes on metamodernism (Vermeulen & Van den Akker 2010), a publication
1.The term ‘Religious Studies’ will be used here as broadly synonymous with ‘the comparave academic study of religion’ and should be
understood to include disciplines such as history of religion, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, various elds of invesgaon
into specic religions from (Buddhist Studies, Baha’i Studies etc.) and others.
2.‘Theology’ will be used in this arcle to indicate the study of a single religion carried out within the paradigm of that religion, exemplied
by but not limited to Chrisan Theology. It is any approach that accepts certain core truths from a religious tradion as axiomac and
proceeds to argue from that point. We can therefore speak of Muslim theology, Buddhist theology etc. The religious tradion may not
necessarily use that term itself: In Buddhism, for example, ‘Buddhist philosophy’ is used rather than ‘Buddhist theology’.
3.Or alternavely ‘meta-modernism’ or even ‘meta modernism’. The philosophy is so new that authors and editors have yet to agree on
how to spell it, although the joined, unhyphenated version seems to be gaining ground, perhaps because this is Vermeulen and Van
den Akkers’ preferred form.
4.The phrase ‘the academic study of religion’ will be used in this arcle to refer to a broad meta-discipline encompassing both Religious
Studies and Theology, as dened above.
The academic study of religion has long enjoyed a variety of philosophies and methodologies.
A new entrant to this list has now arisen: metamodernism. This article examines the claims of
metamodernism and makes an initial attempt to relate it to the academic study of religion,
both in its guise as Religious Studies and, more tentatively, as the Theological sciences.
Metamodernism, with its emphasis on oscillation and simultaneity, shows great promise as an
explanatory framework to understand certain current religious developments, such as the
‘Spiritual but not Religious’ phenomenon. It may also assist in creating a growing convergence
between the various branches of the academic study of religion.
Towards a metamodern academic study of religion
and a more religiously informed metamodernism
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that can be regarded as the metamodernist foundational
document. The following year, they followed it up with an
updated version of their theory in the Dutch-language
journal Twijfel (Van den Akker & Vermeulen 2011), and they
have remained active in the metamodernist movement ever
since (e.g. Vermeulen & Van den Akker 2015a; 2015b). By
2015, they felt it necessary to clarify, firstly, that they had not
invented the term, but that their predecessors leaned more
towards either modernism or postmodernism than they felt
comfortable with, and more importantly, that:
Metamodernism, as we see, is not a philosophy. In the same vein,
it is not a movement, a programme, an aesthetic register, a visual
strategy, or a literary technique or trope. ... For us, it is a structure
of feeling. (Vermeulen & Van den Akker 2015a)
Elsewhere, Vermeulen (Anonymous 2012b) explains the
concept in slightly different terms:
For us, metamodernism is not so much a philosophy – which
implies a closed ontology – as it is an attempt at a vernacular, or
as you say, a sort of open source document, that might
contextualise and explain what is going on around us, in political
economy as much as in the arts.
I sympathise with the effort to avoid a closed ontology, but
this implies a somewhat technical definition of ‘philosophy’
and not necessarily the only sense in which the term can be
used in the humanities, and especially in Religious Studies. I
trust Vermeulen and Van den Akker will forgive me for
continuing to speak of metamodern ‘philosophy’ if I stipulate
that I understand the term in a far more open-ended way,
indeed, one might say metamodernistically as an oscillation
between ‘love’ and ‘wisdom’, the original constitutive parts
of the term.
Metamodernism is not the only proposed alternative to the
modernist versus postmodernist stalemate. Knudsen (2013)
names some of the main contenders:
I will admit, as academia clamors to find some term for ‘whatever-
we-call-coming-after’ postmodernism, I long for the days of yore
when the nomenclature took little effort. ... As for the hideous
term post-postmodernism, let’s pray that it is simply a place
marker.5 Nicolas Bourriaud’s essay, Altermodernism, shows some
good sense, but unfortunately the term ‘altermodernism’ sounds
too much like postmodernism. I am trying to gain a fondness for
the term ‘metamodernism’, advanced in 2010 by Timotheus
Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker ... . The theorists use ‘meta’
as a prefix to refer to ‘between’. Granted, ‘meta’ is more commonly
associated with the idea of ‘after’ or ‘post’, but that definition
would be unhelpful as we have been there and done that.
Fortunately, ‘meta’ also can refer to an oscillation between
adjacent positions. ... metamodernism then denotes the to-and-
fro occupation of both the positions of modern attachment and
postmodern detachment.
The differences between metamodernism, altermodernism
and post-postmodernism are subtle and need not concern us
here. All claim that they reflect (and, simultaneously, create)
a new zeitgeist, or, to use Vermeulen and Van den Akker’s
5.I must concur with Knudsen on this point. What comes next, post-post-
postmodernism?
term, a structure of feeling. Whatever ends up as the historical
label for that zeitgeist to future cultural historians may well
be known by none of these terms. For our current purposes,
however, metamodernism will serve as the verbal placeholder
for this emerging zeitgeist.
Art, and discussion about art, has been the mainstay of
metamodernism since its inception, and metamodernism has
become an underlying leitmotiv in a number of contemporary
artistic movements. On the Notes on Metamodernism webzine,
we find metamodern analyses of New Romanticism (Turner
2010) and The New Aesthetic (Turner 2012). Levin (2012)
traces the beginning of metamodern art to a crisis within
postmodern art circles:
Vermeulen and Van den Akker propose that ‘the Postmodern
culture of relativism, irony, and pastiche’ is finished, having been
replaced by a post-ideological condition that stresses engagement,
affect, and storytelling. ‘Meta’, they note, implies an oscillation
between Modernism and Postmodernism and therefore must
embrace doubt, as well as hope and melancholy, sincerity and
irony, affect and apathy, the personal and the political, and
technology and techne (which is translated as ‘knowingness’).
Although it rejects the postmodernist call to choose sides,
metamodernism is not necessarily apolitical. Vermeulen
(Aikens, Kopsa & Vermeulen 2012), for example, analyses the
position of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in the light of
the 2012 Dutch elections. More broadly speaking, the emergence
of metamodernism was itself the result of political turmoil:
In sum, the emergent sensibility we have come to call
metamodernism must be situated within the context of a
threefold ‘crisis’. To our minds, this triple crisis consists of a
collapsing political centre, the climate crisis and the credit crunch.
(Anonymous 2010a)
This self-positioning of metamodernism in a concrete
historical context shows that it is not ahistorical. Indeed,
within its own terms of reference, metamodernism oscillates
between the historical and the ahistorical (Vermeulen 2011).
Metamodernism is a 21st-century development, and its
proponents tend to be young. If it catches on, it will be the
philosophy of the Millennial Generation. Metamodernism
is ‘a paradigmatic shift lived by a generation born in the
1980s’ (Anonymous 2014). It is therefore unsurprising to see
that it has not (yet) necessarily used the conventional 20th-
century academic distribution channels of the monograph
and the journal article to disseminate itself. To investigate
metamodernism, we have to delve into the world of online
articles, tweets, blog posts and podcasts. It has started
to make its presence known in students’ postgraduate
dissertations, however (Colvin 2013; Dumitrescu 2014;
Duquette 2014; Frick 2015; Furlow 2015; McDonald 2014;
Rowell 2013; Shepherd 2015; Suparka 2012; Van Beuningen
2014), once again underlining its current status as a
philosophy for and by the young.
What, then, am I, a not-so-young academic, seeing in this
new philosophy? Just this: while it would be expecting too

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much for us to be able to apply metamodernism simplistically
to Religious Studies without adapting it to our needs, its
underlying principles can be shown to apply to religion itself
(or at least to some religions) and to the study of religion.
Furthermore, metamodernism claims to express the zeitgeist
of the early 21st century, which is borne out when art critics
who show no signs of being familiar with it say things like:
At once knowingly self-conscious about art, unafraid, and
unashamed, these young artists not only see the distinction
between earnestness and detachment as artificial; they grasp
that they can be ironic and sincere at the same time, and they
are making art from this compound-complex state of mind ....
(Saltz 2010)
not to mention when large numbers of people use apparently
contradictory self-ascriptions like ‘spiritual but not religious’
with perfect sincerity. Even if we choose not to use
metamodernism explicitly as a research methodology, it
clarifies events in our time that remain baffling and
contradictory in terms of earlier ways of looking at the world.
This is a first exploration into the relationship, if there is one,
between metamodernism, religion and Religious Studies.
Rather than responding to Vermeulen and Van den Akker’s
original thesis and the reactions to it, I intend to structure
this article according to the list of 10 characteristics of
metamodernism listed by Abramson (2015b). There is also a
supplementary list of five more characteristics he provided
soon afterwards (Abramson 2015a), but these will not be
directly considered in this article. For each of Abramson’s 10
characteristics, I will consider whether this is something we in
the academic study of religion can use, and where possible,
whether we have something metamodernism can use. This is
admittedly a somewhat superficial approach, but it is
intended to act as a starting point only. A more in-depth
discussion between Religious Studies/Theology and
metamodernism, the discussion will show, can be fruitful and
is something that needs to be done. It will take considerably
more than this brief article. As an editorial in the webzine
Notes on Metamodernism states, ‘... metamodernism is an
oscillation rather than a balance, an ongoing discussion
without answer ...’ (Anonymous 2010b), and this will
hopefully be the beginning rather than the end of a relationship
between metamodernism, Theology and Religious Studies.
It needs to be understood that metamodernists see it as
more than just a methodology. It is also a movement, a
prescriptive view of what at least some metamodernists see
as the dominant pattern of thought and feeling in the near
future. We will return to that briefly in the conclusion
of this article, but for now, let us concentrate on
metamodernism as a methodology, as a tool with which to
analyse religious phenomena, at least as far as the academic
study of religion is concerned.
However, the ideas of metamodernism also affect religion
itself, and in that context the totalising aspect of
metamodernism takes on a greater significance. We will
briefly consider how Abramson’s principles resonate within
the history of religions, so that by the conclusion of this article
we can arrive at some thoughts at what role religion would
play in a metamodern society.
Metamodernism as a negoaon
between modernism and
postmodernism
Because postmodernism was a direct response to modernism,
these two cultural philosophies include a number of diametrically
opposed first principles. ... Metamodernism negotiates between
modernism and postmodernism by submitting that the first
principles of modernism and postmodernism need not be seen
as being in opposition to one another, but in fact can both be
operative simultaneously within a single individual or group of
individuals. (Abramson 2015b)
This was the prime motivation behind the development of
metamodernism, and it reflects its origins in Cultural
Studies and the study of the role of the arts in society. In
Religious Studies, the clash between the modernist and
postmodernist paradigms has perhaps not been experienced
with quite the same level of alarm. That is not to say that we
have been left completely untouched by it, of course. This
contradiction is society-wide, and it affects even those who
prefer not to participate.
In what follows, Abramson presents examples and case
studies mostly from the postmodern pole before displaying
the metamodern alternatives. I, however, come from
Religious Studies, a very modernist academic tradition, and
my own analyses will no doubt display that background.
Perhaps between the two of us, the reader will come to an
understanding of how metamodernism can become a useful
part of the Religious Studies toolkit.
Nevertheless, let us take the principle explained here and ask
whether in Religious Studies there are two completely
contradictory views that both seem to be entirely valid.
Secularisation theory comes to mind. It is undeniably true
that more and more people worldwide are leaving religion
behind and taking on a non-religious identity. It is equally
the case that religion is thriving and that as a factor in society,
it is more vital than ever to take account of the role of religion.
From either a classical (i.e. modernist) or a postmodern
perspective, this is an intolerable contradiction. The
modernist demands a solution to the logical contradiction,
while the postmodernist demands that sides be taken and the
situation be ironically deconstructed. From the metamodernist
point of view, however, the new emerging category of
‘spiritual but not religious’ was only to be expected. A
metamodern Peter Berger (1996) would not have needed to
recant his earlier work – it would simply become one pole of
a view of reality that needed to be balanced by a new one.
The new does not invalidate the old – it completes the picture,
for now.

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Another useful example is the drawn-out tension between
Religious Studies and Theology. In a metamodern approach
to religion, the two classical approaches towards studying
religion would not cease to exist. Individuals would probably
feel drawn to one or the other, as they do now. But moving
within the spectrum of approaches would become less of a
life-and-death academic struggle. One could, within the
constraints of a given project, accept certain religious
teachings as true without setting this as the yardstick of all
future projects. Of course, this already happens. Religious
Studies scholars are human beings, and they have their own
beliefs, prejudices and preferences that will affect their work.
But the advantage of the metamodern approach is that it
allows an openness, an accountability that is now closed off
by a rigid attempt to maintain an unattainable epoch. Equally,
the theologian can move into Religious Studies territory with
a greater fluidity of thought. You have not ceased to be a
theologian because you are currently oscillating in the
direction of Religious Studies. You have become a different
kind of theologian, one better suited to the task at hand.
Tomorrow’s project will call for a different blend of the two.
Dialogue over dialeccs
Postmodernism favored ‘dialectics’ over dialogue, whereas
metamodernism explicitly advances the cause of dialogue.
Where the ‘dialectical’ thinking of the postmodernists assumed
that every situation involves just two primary opposing forces –
which do battle until one emerges victorious and the other is
destroyed – dialogic thinking rejects the idea that there is no
middle ground or means of negotiation between different
positions. ... Metamodern dialogue does not pave over differences
between parties and positions, it simply emphasizes areas of
overlap between contesting opinions that could lead to effective
collective action on a slate of issues. (Abramson 2015b)
This statement distinguishes metamodernism from neo-
Marxism or any other philosophy with a Hegelian ancestry.
Metamodernism does not seek to destroy modernism or
postmodernism by bringing them into an all-encompassing
synthesis. Indeed, for the metamodernist project to succeed,
the contrasting forces it attempts to bring into dialogue must,
I submit, continue to exist and even to thrive. Both modernism
and postmodernism must exist as viable alternatives to act as
boundary conditions between which the metamodern
thinker can oscillate (or, in the alternative understanding
explored below, hold simultaneously):
[I]n a postmodern scenario, nothing ever gets solved because the
contending forces angrily oppose and caricature one another
until (in fact) both are degraded and destroyed in number and in
spirit. Meanwhile, in a metamodern scenario, at least something
gets achieved, even if it doesn’t resolve all disputes between the
two groups or ensure that they’ll be able to work together on
other issues. (Abramson 2015b)
In a small way, this has been the case in Religious Studies.
The very conservatism and methodological eclecticism with
which I opened this article has ensured that there have been
vigorous dialogues between scholars of religion working
from different perspectives.
This should not make us shrug our shoulders and declare
that metamodernism is something ‘we have always done’. To
recognise oneself in a small aspect of something as all-
encompassing as metamodernism is heartening, but that is
very different from embracing this philosophy and trying to
put it into action consistently.
Paradox
Metamodernism embraces the paradoxical. For instance, in
negotiating between modernism’s belief in universality and
postmodernism’s belief in contingency, metamodernism
posits that certain ideas can be ‘objectively’ true for an
individual even though the individual also understands that
they are not universally true. ... This paradoxical relationship
between how we conceive of truth ‘locally’ and how we
conceive of it at the level of society allows us to constantly
exhibit and participate in paradoxes, as we are simultaneously
aware and accepting of how we individually operate and how
that differs dramatically from how others do. (Abramson
2015b)
If we had asked metamodernism to supply us with a way to
understand religious belief and practice, we could hardly
have asked for more than this. The person who sincerely
believes in the creation story presented in the book of Genesis
also knows for a fact that the dinosaurs were killed off by a
giant comet 75 million years ago. The person who knows
perfectly well that the wafer of bread was created in a bakery
down the road out of flour, yeast and water also knows that
it is the body of Christ.
To the modernist mindset (and the profoundly modernist
biblical literalist), this is a contradiction that must be resolved
by choosing one side or another. To the postmodernist it is an
ironic situation ripe for deconstruction. To the metamodernist,
however, the fact that there is a paradox does not mean that
one is wrong and the other right, or that one has to be
relegated to a mere ‘subjective truth’.
What metamodernism does here is to discredit the entire
concept of cognitive dissonance by placing different levels of
objective truth in different sectors (I hesitate to call them
‘levels’) of existential and universal truth. Paradox, in this
context, is not limited to contradictory truth claims. It is an
existential acknowledgement of differences, differences
between you and I, and differences within my own
experience.
In this, metamodernism comes surprisingly close to the
traditional exegetical rules from the major religions, none of
which ever followed the modernist project of literalism.
Origen, for example, laid down that besides a literal reading
of a piece of scripture, one also needed:
three further senses, or levels of meaning, each of which was in a
broad sense allegorical: the ‘moral’ or ‘tropological’ (from which
one learned rules of conduct), the ‘allegorical’ proper (from
which one learned articles of faith), and the ‘anagogical’ (from
which one learned of the invisible realities of heaven). (Packer
1958:101; cf. Reno 2006)

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The literal sense was the least interesting and least religiously
fulfilling of these. Indeed, all the major religions can be
shown to have developed such sophisticated ways of
interpreting their texts, and there are indications of the same
in lesser known ones: as an often-cited6 but possibly
apocryphal story has it, Ashanti storytellers preface their
performance with ‘I am going to tell you a story. It is a lie. But
not everything in it is false’.7
Spong (2016; cf. Chellew-Hodge 2016) goes so far as to call
literalism a ‘Gentile Heresy’, in which non-Jewish converts
diverged from the sophisticated exegetical practices of the
Jewish tradition. Such a conclusion is controversial, but
regardless of whether the origins of literalism can be traced
to late Antiquity, it certainly became a major factor in the
Modern era. Modernism has no appetite for paradoxes.
In some religious traditions, the paradox is not merely an
issue of interpretation; it is employed as a psycho-spiritual
technology that is only now being duplicated by
contemporary psychology, the most famous example of this
being the Zen kōan (Clasquin 1989), but examples can be
shown from the Orthodox Christian and Muslim Sufi
traditions as well. What metamodernism offers us here may
be a way to speak about paradox without constantly needing
to slip back into modernist language patterns that require us
to explain the paradox away.
An academic study of religion based on metamodernism
would ultimately not even employ the word ‘paradox’, so
completely integrated would be the paradoxical view of life.
We are a long way from that. Even metamodernism itself, as
we can see in the quotation above, has yet to reach that point.
And that, too, is a familiar position to students of Zen
Buddhism. If the paradoxical view of reality completely
transcends the reality that produced the paradox in the first
place, it ceases to be paradoxical and just becomes another
reality, ready to produce its own paradoxes. Kōan study
prepares the student to see ‘transcendence’ as an illusion and
‘enter the market place with helping hands’, not trying to
make the paradox go away but living it fully. In Zen
Buddhism, this is expressed in the ‘Ten Ox-herding pictures’,
a pictorial Pilgrim’s Progress in which:
The first six of these scenes show the gradual stages in the
aspirant’s taming of the ox, but number seven – Forgetting the
Ox, the Person Remains - illustrates the ox-tamer alone living as
a recluse in a mountain retreat. But this is clearly not the end of
spiritual training, for the final picture in the sequence, far from
being a depiction of a life of nature freed from the bounds of
society, is a clear return from the mountains and forests back to
re-engagement with the social realm. (Harris 2007:163)
The return of the sage to social reality is a common motif in
religious literature. Jesus emerges from the desert (and later,
6.For example, hp://teachersinstute.yale.edu/curriculum/units/1993/2/93.02.01.
x.html, viewed 11 October 2016.
7.Aributed by some users (e.g. hp://www.thinkbuddha.org/arcle/358/lies-in-
which-not-everything-is-false, viewed 11 October 2016) to Wendy Doniger but
otherwise of obscure origin. In this case, though, the quotaon’s mysterious
provenance reinforces exactly what it is trying to convey.
more famously, from the realm of death). The Prophet
Muhammad leaves the cave to preach his message in the
streets of Makkah. The Buddha rises from his seat under the
Bodhi tree; the shaman exits the trance world of the ancestors.
What the sage has experienced is too important to be kept
private. It must be shared. We can see this as a religious
variation on Campbell’s (1949) ‘Myth of the Hero’. The
paradox here is an existential one, of setting out to teach the
unteachable, sharing that which is most private.
In metamodernism, as we shall see under point 9 below, we
see a similar re-engagement in the form of a cautious return
to grand narratives. By pointing this out, I do not mean to
imply that metamodernism is a religion, nor even a proto-
religion. But it points to metamodernism as a way of viewing
reality that may be particularly fruitful as we try to
understand the religious impulse. That does not necessarily
imply that Religious Studies, or Theology, must necessarily
turn to metamodernism. A purely modernist or postmodernist
approach to the academic study of religion remains a viable
option – viable within the restraints of the chosen paradigm.
As we have seen, metamodernism actually requires these
options to remain viable. However, we can perhaps see a
deeper, richer picture of the religious world when we
transcend these and adopt a methodology that already has
affinities with our topic of investigation.
Juxtaposion
Juxtaposition occurs when one thing is super-imposed atop
another thing from which it would normally be deemed entirely
separate. ... this juxtaposition can arise when an individual feels
an ironic detachment from their culture, but this detachment
gives rise to a series of entirely earnest emotions and perspectives.
(Abramson 2015b)
In Religious Studies, one of the first things we teach our
students is that anyone, from any religion or none, can study
or teach this discipline. We arrived at this position from
the Eliade/Van der Leeuw interpretation of Husserl’s
phenomenology (‘soft positivism’, as my friends in the
Philosophy department call it). But can we not recognise
ourselves in Abramson’s description above? When I teach a
religion that I do not belong to, indeed a religion that in my
most private thoughts I regard as ridiculous, I am indeed
both ironic and completely earnest.
Some years ago, a colleague reported on a conference in
which the burning topic had been whether one could study
Islam without being a Muslim. I replied, ‘That is very
interesting. I just came from a conference in which the main
topic was whether you could study Buddhism if you actually
were a Buddhist!’ In Religious Studies, the role of the scholar-
practitioner remains an open issue subject to constant re-
examination. Metamodernism could lend us insights here to
assist. There need not be a separate category of scholar–
practitioner. One oscillates between the role of scholar and
the role of practitioner. With time and practice, both roles are
present simultaneously. The dichotomy is shown not to
be false but negotiable.

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The collapse of distances
The distance between the self and others, and between the self
and society, is one that postmodernism celebrates by finding
myriad ways to put the self (or groups of selves) in a dialectic
with opposing selves or groups. Postmodernism, which came of
age in the Age of Radio, is therefore likely to emphasize how
meaning degenerates as it moves across the vast expanse of
space between selves and groups of selves. Metamodernism,
which came of age in the Digital Age, recognizes that we feel at
once distant from others — because on the Internet almost
everyone is a stranger, so we are daily surrounded by more
strangers than at any other point in human history — but also
incredibly close to others, as the Internet allows us to create
connections more quickly than ever before. (Abramson 2015b)
The central argument here seems to be that an overriding
philosophical approach betrays the traces of the technological
environment in which it arose. Although Abramson does not
mention it here, modernism arose in the Age of the Book, and
reveals its central belief in the permanence of Truth, once it was
satisfactorily discovered. In contrast to this is postmodernism,
with its legacy from the Age of Radio, and now metamodernism,
which reflects its arising in the Age of the Internet.
It is an intriguing notion, and one that certainly warrants
further thought. One objection is obviously that the flow of
causality is seen as a one-way process in a, dare I say it, quite
modernist fashion. Is it the case that the technological
environment directly influences what philosophical movements
are able to arise, or does an incipient philosophical movement
also influence what technological environments are able to
be invented? Would it have been possible to invent the
Internet unless there was already the first glimmering of a
metamodernist awareness? Can we not see an intricate
interplay and mutual pattern of influences between these
entities? In a sense I am accusing Abramson here of being
insufficiently metamodern in his analysis.
But for the moment, Abramson’s (2015b) project is to clearly
distinguish metamodernism from postmodernism, as we can
see when he states that:
The simultaneous anonymity and false intimacy of the Internet
also so confuses self-identity that it makes it harder and harder
to distinguish our opinion of ourselves from others’ opinions of
us, or distinguish what we could or do believe from what others
believe. This means that it’s harder than ever before to pretend
that we are in a dialectical relationship with other people or
ideas – rather than being in the midst of a swirl of identity and
belief we only sometimes feel we control.
But what does Abramson understand by ‘the Internet’?
This is not Tim Berners-Lee’s Internet of static web pages,
which took an existing concept of ‘publishing’ and applied
it to a digital environment. It is not even the Internet of
e-mail, which for all its convenience is just a digitised
version of letter writing, an eminently modernist activity.
Later, under point 2 of his Five Further Characteristics, he
cites the ‘social discovery application Tinder’ and ‘the
140-character free-for-all, that is, Twitter’ as examples
(Abramson 2015a), and it is the domain of ‘social
networking’ that appears to be the Internet that inspires the
diffused, ever-changing metamodern identity.
Mulple subjecvies
Postmodernism required the ‘Balkanization’ of self-identity —
the partitioning of the self and groups of selves into clear boxes
of race, religion, gender, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation,
and so on -- in order to establish its dialectics. ... Metamodernism
embraces, instead, the notion of multiple subjectivities: the idea
that not only do we all find ourselves in numberless subjective
categories all at once, but that we even temporarily occupy and
share subjectivities with others who might seem very different
from us. ... To be clear, none of this reflects a desire to erase or
sideline existing subjective categories, merely to complicate our
models of how they develop, interact, intersect, and in time help
form our individual and collective identities. (Abramson 2015b)
Identity is a key concept in Religious Studies and indeed in
religion itself, though not always discussed explicitly. We
identify a specific block of religious beliefs and practices as,
say, Christianity, and lump everyone with an institutional
affiliation to that block as ‘Christians’. When the question
arises whether one can be simultaneously Christian and, say,
Buddhist, we have a problem. We may say that one can adopt
certain innocuous aspects of Buddhism into Christianity, or we
may talk of a new syncretism that is ongoing, which will in the
course of time give rise to a new ‘ism’. But in reality, identity
remains a deeply entrenched part of religious life. We still
see Christian speakers and organisations denouncing yoga
because of its Hindu roots. They rarely denounce the Gregorian
calendar with its days named after Germanic gods and months
named after Roman ones. That has become entrenched as part
of their identity and no paradox is experienced.
Identities are remarkably persistent and may outlive their
original referents: South Africans of Indian descent continue
to self-identify as ‘Tamil speakers’, ‘Hindi speakers’ and so
on long after the last fluent speaker of that language has
passed away (Clasquin 1997). My membership in a linguistic
group, or a religion, is the essential descriptor of who I am. It
does not disappear just because I no longer actually speak the
language, or practice the religion.
In the metamodern paradigm, however, it is the multiple
identity that is the new normal and the singular identity that
is an old-fashioned holdover. From a Religious Studies
perspective, this mingling of identities started long before the
Internet, and of course Abramson gives it only as an example.
But taking the metamodernist perspective frees us from
having to explain why the 21st-century, yoga-practising,
Kabbalah-studying and still occasionally churchgoing
urbanite feels no need to solidify the new syncretic lifestyle
into a new ‘Something-ism’. Metamodernism does not call for
the destruction of the existing religious ‘isms’ and their
replacement by a new secular order. It asks us to recognise
that identity formation is a complex process and that the result
is always provisional and may stubbornly refuse to comply
with the religious blocs we continue to teach our students.

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This may be a hard lesson for Religious Studies. There are
certain unspoken theological assumptions about group
identity that have formed this discipline and continue to
inform it. In a world where religious identities shift and
mutate constantly, can Religious Studies continue to teach
that ‘Hindus do this’ and ‘Christians believe that’? And as for
Theology? That is likely to be an even harder battle, as
theologians from the various religious traditions adjust to a
world that questions the very basis of their disciplines. If it is
hard to assign definitive identities to various religious
groups, how much harder will it be to argue that this identity
forms a viable basis from which to commence an argument?
On a more individual level, Stirner (2012) argues that the
suppression of the subject by postmodernism is overcome in
the metamodern paradigm, but that there is no going back to
the old modernist subject:
The reemerged subject is not the old modern one. It contains no
transcendental justifications. Concepts of identity, selfhood and
subjectivity can always be dismantled and deconstructed. But while
the awareness about this still rightfully persists, new times call us
to acknowledge that the subject nevertheless appears, in moments
of intersubjectivity, in reciprocal spaces of belief, trust and love.
To the Religious Studies scholar, this kind of analysis simply
cries out for a dialogue with ancient Buddhist debates about
the nature of anatta, involving not only current Buddhist
orthodoxy, but also the points of view of now-extinct schools
such as the Sarvāstivāda and Pudgalavāda. Similarly, it
invites dialogue with sophisticated arguments on the nature
of the self-emerging from thousands of years of Hindu,
Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholarships. Some of those
arguments will resonate with metamodernism, others not. A
mutual enrichment will occur in either case.
Collaboraon
Metamodernism encourages not only dialogue but collaboration.
In a world in which we are constantly being influenced by
innumerable forces – some we recognize as influential for us,
some we don’t – metamodernism literalizes this experience by
encouraging us to consciously join our efforts and perspectives
with those of others. (Abramson 2015b)
Collaboration does not seem to come naturally to Religious
Studies scholars. I am writing this article as a sole author.
Research in Religious Studies is normally done by one, two, or
at most three people. We have maintained a 19th-century model
of the lone and (hopefully) brilliant scholar disseminating
knowledge to students and fellow academics alike. The lecture
remains our prime means of tuition; the monograph and
research article our research output. Metamodernism may be a
wake-up call to us to reconsider our research and teaching
models. Yes, even tuition. Abramson (2015b) continues:
Metamodern learning models, for instance, are likely to
emphasize students working together to create projects that are
simultaneously self-expressive for each individual member and
also an adequate self-expression of the group, however diverse
its viewpoints and subjectivities may be.
We see from the tentative tone (‘are likely to’) that this is an
area of thus-far unrealised potential. Perhaps it is not only
Religious Studies that suffers from the long reach of 19th-
century modernism.
Simultaneity and generave
ambiguity
Early descriptions of metamodernism suggested that an
individual thinking metamodernistically ‘oscillates’ between
opposing states of thought, feeling, and being – almost as though
human beings were pendulums swinging between very different
subjectivities. More recent understandings of metamodernism
emphasize, instead, simultaneity – the idea that the metamodern
self does not move between differing positions but in fact
inhabits all of them at once. The paradoxical element of
metamodern juxtapositions is produced by this very simultaneity;
after all. (Abramson 2015b)
Metamodernism has moved from a philosophy of oscillation
to one of simultaneity. For a 6-year-old philosophical system
to have undergone such a profound change shows that it is
capable of change and growth. As recently as 2011, Vermeulen
could still state categorically that ‘metamodernism is above
all about oscillation’ (Vermeulen 2011).
Perusing metamodernist writings shows that the older
‘oscillation’ metaphor is far from dead. ‘[W]e enter a new
period: a metamodern period, whose structure of feeling is
characterised by a sort of “oscillation” between these poles’
(Dempsey 2015). It would be contrary to the entire spirit of
metamodernism to launch an inquisition against a recalcitrant
oscillationist faction, or to split into Vermeulenist and
Abramsonist schools. If metamodern thought consists of
being able to contain two contradictory ideas simultaneously,
then it must be able to contain both the oscillationist model
and (recursively) itself. Besides, a sufficiently fast oscillation
gives us a de facto simultaneity.
If metamodernism is indeed moving towards a position of
simultaneity, then a rich field of discussion between
metamodernism and Religious Studies opens up. Binary,
‘Aristotelian’ logic, as Religious Studies scholars know, is not
the only game in town. Hindu Advaita, the Buddhist
Catuṣkoṭi system as used (and demolished) by Nāgārjuna,
the non-dual position found in Zen and Taoism, and even the
complex Jain epistemology all become possible interlocutory
partners. I will not pretend to commence this multilogue in
this initial investigation, but it shows that metamodernism
has the potential to be an interesting new western perspective
on perennial issues in the comparative study of religious
philosophies.
For such a conversation to take place, a number of questions
would need to be cleared up. For example, if metamodernist
simultaneity remains built on an oscillation between two poles,
is there not a dualism built into it, if at a somewhat deeper
level? Is it possible to oscillate between three, or four, poles?
Infinite poles? Vermeulen hints that it may be so when he writes
that ‘... it is not so much about the oscillation between binary
opposites, as between the various ends on a multidimensional
continuum of energies and intensities’ (Vermeulen 2011).

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Likewise, Abramson (2015a) notes, ‘The problem with
“metaxic oscillation” is that it merely re-entrenches
postmodern dialectics by convincing us that every problem is
fundamentally bipolar’, and:
if one were to very self-consciously ‘oscillate’ between opposing
positions, one would in fact just be acknowledging the dominance
of postmodern dialectics (i.e. binary systems with ‘poles’ at
either end that one can swing between). (Abramson 2015b)
From a Religious Studies perspective, I agree that a
philosophy that reduces reality to a series of bipolar
contradictions is insufficient to explain the complex
interactions of beliefs and practices we observe in the
religious sphere. But simultaneity has its own danger of
suggesting a situation of stasis that is certainly not the aim
of metamodernism – Abramson speaks of ‘moving
“between and beyond” currently entrenched positions’.
The relation between oscillation and simultaneity is the
metamodern kōan, the burning question that can be ‘solved’
only temporarily and provisionally before the student
moves on to the next kōan.
Abramson (2015b) continues:
While by no means explicitly connected to drug culture,
metamodernism often indulges paradoxes and juxtapositions
more readily observed and accepted in an altered state of
consciousness, which is why so many television programs and
books that appeal to the drug-using demographic ... can be
considered metamodern.
And here we may have found a potentially especially fruitful
area where Religious Studies and metamodernism can
cooperate. This time, the contribution goes both ways.
Religious Studies has been studying altered states of
consciousness for over a century. We have analysed the texts,
we have observed the rituals (with and without drugs) that
lead to these states, we have attached electrodes to the scalps
of meditating monks ... Religious Studies has lifetimes of
empirical observations and textual analysis to contribute
here. Metamodernism can contribute a philosophical
language in which mystical experience is no longer the
exception, not a rare ‘peak experience’, rather this realm of
paradox and juxtaposition becomes the norm. The
combination of the two would be a fascinating study of
human experience.
An opmisc response to tragedy
by returning, albeit cauously, to
metanarraves
Since the term ‘metamodernism’ was coined in 1975, metamodern
theorists have all agreed that metamodernism is used by
individuals and societies as a generative response to tragedy;
indeed, the phrase ‘a romantic response to crisis’ is often used to
describe metamodernism. (cf. Dempsey 2015; Turner 2010)
Metamodernists are as aware of political, economic,
climatological, and other forms of chaos as is anyone else, but
they choose to remain optimistic and to engage their communities
proactively even when and where they believe a cause has been
lost. Theorists describe this way of thinking as an ‘as if’
philosophical mode; that is, the metamodernist chooses to live
‘as if’ positive change is possible even when we are daily given
reminders that human culture is in fact in a state of disarray and
likely even decline. (Abramson 2015b)
To live ‘as if’ positive change is possible? To the scholar of
religion, this statement immediately brings up Pascal’s wager,
as it has been restated by Pope Benedict XVI, Robert
Spaemann, Iain King and so many others (e.g. Spaemann
2005:200). To live ‘as if God exists’ is in fact a venerable
religious position that long predates Pascal. In Greek
philosophy, we see it in the life of Protagoras, who was
personally agnostic but continued to practise conventional
rituals. It appears in the Bacchae by Euripides, where it is
pronounced by the character Kadmos (who is punished by
the gods for his impiety!). Versions of the argument can be
found in the writings of the early Christian apologist Arnobius
of Sicca (c. 330) and the Muslim kalam scholar Imam al-
Haramayn al-Juwayni (c. 478). Given a modicum of literary
license, we can even see it in Hindu and Buddhist apologetics,
for example, in the Kalama Sutta (Aṅguttara Nikaya 3:65). It
has even been inverted into ‘the Atheist’s Wager ’ by the
contemporary philosopher Michael Martin (1990:232–238).
However, Abramson, unlike Pascal, does not present the
reader with a forced choice between two incommensurable
alternatives. His ‘positive change’ is a broad conception and
an ongoing process, not a static choice between two
competing ontologies.
Despite this, it shows that metamodernism is not entirely a
radical break with all philosophy that has gone before it. Like
any philosophy, it builds on what has been done before,
explicitly so when it attempts to balance the competing
trends of modernism and postmodernism, more subtly when
it presents, as it does here, arguments and positions taken,
perhaps on an unconscious level, from the rich history of
religio-philosophical enquiry. Even more so when it then
extends those positions into new contexts.
Abramson continues:
If postmodernism negated the possibility of personal, local,
regional, national, or international metanarratives other than
those that were/are strictly dialectical, metamodernism permits
us to selectively, and with eyes wide open, return to such
metanarratives when they help save us from ennui, anomie,
despair, or moral and ethical sloth.
Could religion be among such metanarratives? Of course, in
this context religion would never be the only metanarrative in
play, always a bitter pill for the religious believer to swallow.
But certainly religion could be one source of the metanarratives
that would inform, however temporarily and contingently,
the creation of cautious new metanarratives.
Interdisciplinarity
The reason metamodernism is so oriented toward crisis-response
is because its tendency to dismantle and rearrange structures is a

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tacit acknowledgment that those structures – as they were
previously arranged – are what likely caused the crisis in the first
place. The metamodernist is therefore likely to support the
dismantling, realignment, and rearrangement (or even the
exclusion altogether) of received terms like ‘genre’, ‘party’,
‘department’, ‘discipline’, ‘institution’, and other similar
demarcations of difference and segregation. To be clear, this is
not an anarchistic opposition to structure, but rather a thoughtful
and civic-minded interest in the radical reevaluation of structures
with an eye toward progressive change. (Abramson 2015b)
My response to this echoes what I said with regard to point 1
above. Metamodernism offers us an opportunity to phase out
the ongoing conflict between Religious Studies and Theology.
Religious Studies is a 19th-century construct. Theology is
much older. Being old does not disqualify either, and a
metamodernist reconceptualisation of the field of the
academic study of religion would most likely see them
survive as two loci of interest. But it would also allow the rise
of new loci, and free scholars to move among those loci as the
moment demands. I take some small issue with Abramson’s
terminology here. ‘Inter’-disciplinarity implies the existence
of two disciplines as hard, well-defined entities. What we
need in the academic study of religion is a ‘Meta’-disciplinarity
in which the boundaries between disciplines are softened
and allowed to overlap.
Conclusion
This has been an admittedly superficial, initial look at
metamodernism from the point of view of Religious Studies.
Each of Abramson’s 10 points, and indeed the 5 supplementary
points that we could not touch upon here, could easily serve
as the source for an entire article on its own, and I hope that
this first attempt will lead to exactly that, if not necessarily by
me. A thorough engagement with Vermeulen and Van den
Akker remains to be done. Even so, I believe that this first
step has shown that there are promising points of contact.
Engagement with metamodernism, I believe I have shown,
opens up the possibilities of new discourses within Religious
Studies and new opportunities for engagement with our
colleagues in Theology, and vice versa. It allows us to
understand the new kind of secularisation we are viewing
right now, that simply refuses to comply with traditional
secularisation theories.
There are limitations to these new possibilities. For now, I do
not see this 6-year-old philosophy as the basis for an overall,
all-encompassing theory of religion. It is not sufficiently
developed for that. More seriously, metamodernism runs the
risk of getting bogged down in its own kind of parochialism.
For now, metamodernism is a Western development, making
use of predominantly Western examples. It is not merely the
philosophy of the Millennial Generation but specifically of
that generation in the Euro-American environment. However,
Vermeulen and Van den Akker (2015a) have stated that this is
a happenstance based on their personal familiarity with that
context and a reluctance to impose metamodernism on other
cultures, and that they would welcome inputs from other
contexts. How will metamodernism deal with current
debates on decoloniality, for example?
If Religious Studies has much to gain from interaction with
metamodernism, the picture gets murkier when we look at
religion itself. Religion as we know it today reflects a
premodern, Axial Age mindset (or arguably an even earlier
one), and much of today’s contemporary events regarding
religion reflects those traditions that have yet to make their
peace with modernism. As for postmodernism, while there
have of course been postmodern theologians and thinkers
within the religious world, we can hardly say that self-
consciously postmodern religion is a large-scale phenomenon.
What are the chances of metamodernism, a ‘structure of feeling’
that claims to supersede both modernism and postmodernism,
by incorporating both, making an impact on religion?
Paradoxically (of course) this is quite possible. The history of
religion shows that altered states of consciousness, the
creative use of paradox, the provisional reconciliation of
false dualisms and many of the other issues that were
discussed above are part of the religious impulse. This does
not mean that metamodernism takes us back to the
premodern, even less that religion was a sort of primordial
metamodernism. It shows that there is a potential affinity
between metamodernism and religion, one that could be
explored and embraced by participants of both, oscillating
from one to the other.
If one may hazard a prediction, it will be the religious tradition
least affected by, and least reconciled with, modernism that
will most easily adjust to a metamodern world. Orthodox
Christianity rather than Evangelical Protestantism and
Vajrayana Buddhism rather than secularised Vipassana, to
name but a few, are the traditions that can reach back into their
rich hermeneutical traditions and engage with an emerging
zeitgeist that has so many themes in common with them.
The religious traditions that have spent the last several
centuries fighting rearguard battles against modernism, in
the process becoming either semi-secularised themselves or
retreating further and further into literalist fundamentalism,
are less likely to thrive in this environment. Either reaction to
modernism has involved sloughing off of the rich texture of
thought, action and affect that gives the adherent a choice of
‘various ends on a multidimensional continuum of energies
and intensities’ (Vermeulen 2011) to oscillate between.
The metamodern religious world will be neither unipolar nor
bipolar. It will be multipolar, and some religions will find
themselves better able to engage with this than others. It is
instructive to note that the most popular form of Buddhism
among Western converts is Tibetan Vajrayana, and that
Orthodox Christianity reports an upsurge in converts in the
Western world. Just as the rise of the overprotective nanny
state8 was countered by the development of extreme sports,
so will metamodernism enable certain religions to return to
8.As foreseen by Michel Foucault under the term ‘biopolics’ (viz. Lemm & Vaer
2014; Morar 2015).

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their roots within the context of this new, connected world. A
new form of religiosity will evolve that oscillates between (or
simultaneously adheres to) deep reserves of traditional
spirituality and radical personal freedom. Dare we call it
‘spiritual but not religious’?
In the end, neither the Religious Studies scholar, nor the
theologian, nor the religious adherent may have much choice in
the matter. If the proponents of metamodernism are correct and
it, or something very much like it by another name, turns out to
be the dominant ‘structure of feeling’ of the 21st century and
beyond, then we will all end up living in it, and with it. Nobody
can claim to be unaffected by 400 years of modernism. Equally,
even if one personally does not adhere to postmodernism, one
cannot claim to be unaffected by it. These historical realities are
as much part of our psychosocial environment as the air
we breathe is part of the physical. If we are indeed moving into
a metamodern world, then religion and the academic study of
religion will be both part of that move and be affected by it.
With luck, religion will not need to be dragged in there against
its will, and Religious Studies and Theology will be there to
document and analyse the development, hopefully with an
increased awareness of themselves as part of an overarching
academic study of religion.
Acknowledgements
Compeng interests
The author declares that he has no financial or personal
relationships which may have inappropriately influenced
him in writing this article.
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