I was first introduced to metamodernism through the 2023 viral video by Thomas Flight, which unpacked the term as a way of making sense of “why movies feel so different now.” I had previously seen the term pop up occasionally in articles and blog posts, but hadn’t paid much attention to it. Flight’s video made clear why metamodernism had real value as an explanatory framework for what’s happening in contemporary culture. Once I became more familiar with it, I started noticing metamodern dynamics everywhere. Many dots started to connect about today’s technology, politics, entertainment, and spirituality.

I read more leading thinkers on metamodernism, including the 2010 article by Dutch cultural theorists which first proposed the term, and the “Metamodernist Manifesto” which followed in 2011. As I became more familiar with metamodernism’s “third way” (of sorts) between modernism and postmodernism, it struck me as a concept particularly fitting for the chaotic digital age. Metamodernism’s key term—“oscillation”—describes a constant toggling between seemingly contradictory temperaments and beliefs. It’s an ideological counterpart to the technological rhythms that have become our way of life: constant scrolling, clicking, swiping, and moving between a dizzying array of ideas, aesthetics, arguments, and moods. This sort of disposition naturally breeds incoherence, but incoherence is all we know in the internet age. Metamodern people have come to peace with incoherence.

But what does metamodernism mean for the church? How do we communicate clear, consistent biblical truth to a culture at ease in contradictions? I ponder this question briefly in my new TGC article, “Understanding the Metamodern Mood.” But much more should be written. For example, I’d love to explore how metamodernism parallels “post-Christian“ culture. Like metamodernism, post-Christian culture is indebted to but conflicted about the past, prone to both deconstruct and build upon aspects of what came before. Wherever the metamodernism conversation goes from here, I’m confident it will be one Christians should fruitfully engage.