Maintaining a Plausibility Structure for the New Cognitive Minority (Part Two)
CARL E. ZYLSTRA
(Part Two)
My previous blog post in this series argued that sustaining a cognitive minority also requires maintaining a social imaginary minority that can, in turn, function as a plausibility structure to keep such a cognitive minority community viable within an increasingly incredulous and sometimes downright hostile dominant majority. (1)
This post attempts to give at least one answer to the question of what it will take to maintain such an alternative plausibility structure for the specifically Christian cognitive minority now being pushed to the side within the remnants of a Western Civilization where Judeo-Christian biblically rooted thought had once played the dominant role. (2)
Without going into the technical arguments of communication theory, it’s perhaps enough to recognize that the foundational way a social imaginary functions as a plausibility structure is through the words and narrative that govern ordinary life. Carl Trueman, for example, uses the noteworthy shift that occurred between his grandfather’s day when the words “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body” would have made absolutely no sense to him at all. It wouldn’t just be that he didn’t agree with the assumptions – he wouldn’t even understand the language. But today everyone, whether they agree with assumptions and conclusions of such a sentence, readily comprehend what it means. The social imaginary has changed through a radical change in the words and narrative by which the community interacts and sustains itself. (3)
How then can convictional Christians who wish to shape their beliefs and actions by a biblically formed worldview create such a community that doesn’t buy into the dominant social imaginary but instead maintains itself as a vibrant and viable alternative community shaped by an alternative social imaginary? It seems, at least to me, that the first task is to develop and maintain an alternative rhetoric whose words and narrative can actually function as a plausibility infrastructure for what is now the social imaginary of the new cognitive minority.
That, however, raises the key question for this essay -- how are the words and narrative of any social imaginary formed and shaped within the community? “Social media” and “popular culture” are often suggested as answers. I would suggest, however, that the more foundational answer is simply, through “formal education.” It is through schooling that each emerging generation learns the words and narrative that make up the common assumptions, the social imaginary, that is necessary to organize their worldview and hold their community together.
If so, then it follows that a convictionally Christian education will be essential to creating such a plausibility structure for sustaining a convictionally Christian community of biblically shaped believers. No emerging generation can maintain the social imaginary of a cognitive minority unless their understanding and worldview is shaped by words and narrative formed through the educational process.
That’s why, for instance, even today the rural areas of the Upper Plains are dotted by Hutterite colonies where children, on the one hand are taught the most modern agricultural and business practices, learning excellent English in order to communicate well with those with whom they conduct their economic interactions. But, on the other hand, their children also learn a traditional German based dialect so they can use that language when communicating with each other within their community. In that way their own internal social imaginary can be sustained no matter what the social imaginary of the dominant culture around them may become.
It can hardly be denied within what remains of Western culture the language of a new social imaginary is being enforced by the dominant school systems. To use just one currently “hot” issue, there seems to be a rapidly dwindling number of government schools where it remains permissible for a teacher or professor to teach that there even is a foundational role in society for a family structure made up of a male husband, a female wife, and clearly identifiable male and female children.
In the current setting, then, how can the Christian community of faith expect that children taught their life words and narrative within that type of social imaginary will develop the alternative social imaginary befitting of their own status as a cognitive minority as biblical believers. Back in the day when biblical principles largely dominated Western Civilization and culture, churches might have been able to tweak the social imaginary children learned in the government schools by offering vigorous youth programs and/or Sunday classes in biblical doctrine. But in an environment where the words and narrative of a new post Christian social imaginary are the only words and narratives even permitted to be spoken in the schools, it hardly seems likely that any amount of campfire songs and weekend retreats will be able to undo the seventeen years of K-college “catechizing” in the new social imaginary that such youth have experienced in the government schools.
The bottom line is this: Any Christian community that wants to sustain itself needs to confront the harsh reality that, at least in the West, they are now a clear cognitive minority and the dominant educational system has organized itself to ensure that its graduates never even learn the social imaginary necessary to keep that cognitive minority alive and vibrant.
To some extent, of course, that has always been true. As Roy Clouser has pointed out, the idea of a religious neutrality, for instance, in schools, always was a myth. (4) More recently Richard Edlin has restated clearly the argument that all education is inherently religious. (5) The only question remaining is whether the Christian cognitive minority will recognize this new reality and then dedicate itself to ensuring that the next generation of believers receives their education in a context explicitly dedicated to teaching the words and narrative that will shape the convictionally biblical worldview (social imaginary) on which their Christian faith can be sustained (plausibility structure).
Ultimately, then, whether in formal institutional settings or through home-schooling Christian parents need to insist their children are educated in the language of the cognitive minority, and I would insist, all the way from pre-K through college. (6)
Even more to the point, Christian churches also are going to have to insist on such education for their youth. Otherwise, the day will soon arrive when it will not only be the seekers from outside the faith but also the boards of elders and deacons who will be unable to think and speak in anything other than the language and thought structures of our Western post-theistic cultural morass.
The future of any cognitive minority community depends on passing on its own language and narrative (social imaginary) to the generations yet to come. Thus, when it comes to biblically convictional education, nothing less than the future of the faith is at stake. It may be tempting to naively sidestep the harsh reality that only a thorough going and explicitly convictional, biblically shaped educational process can create the plausibility structure necessary to sustain truly Christian ways of thinking and acting. But such naivete will not bode well for the future of a biblically faithful Christian community and its divine mission.
In the final installment in this series, we will look at why the battle over human sexuality is now – and always has been – at the heart of the conflict between a biblically based social imaginary and every historical alternative.
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(2) This was the theme of 2020 IACE blog series on “Christian Education as a Cognitive Minority. https://iace.education/blog/christian-education-as-a-cognitive-minority-part-1
(3) Carl R. Trueman. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Crossway (2020)
(4) The Myth of Religious Neutrality (University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1st edn 1991; 2nd edn 2005).
(5) https://iace.education/blog/dont-talk-about-faith-based-schools
(6) That is why the International Alliance for Christian Education deliberately has set out to link all efforts at convictional Christian education from Pre-K through seminary and graduate education.
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Carl Zylstra serves as the Vice Chair of the IACE Board of Directors. He is the past president of Dordt University.