New Traditionalists and
Progressive Postmodernists

Antimodern Currents
in Contemporary Faith

Richard Wiltshire *

I offer the following reflection in a spirit of shared searching, especially to those of us engaged in the metamodern conversation around faith and spirituality. I have, and still do, find much inspiration in the metamodern imagination. Yet, in light of some emerging patterns within the church and culture, I now believe that a different reading of the current spiritual landscape is needed.

It seems the church today stands at a peculiar crossroads. Not one of linear development or progress, but of dialectical tension between remembrance and reimagining in the face of widespread disillusionment and disenchantment. In this moment, two distinct trajectories are taking shape. They are not just sociological trends but real theological responses to the spiritual crises of today’s world.

On the one hand, we see a postmodern progressive movement, deeply shaped by deconstruction, trauma, and a longing for authenticity. Emerging often from the wounds of fundamentalist or institutional religion, this current seeks to rupture the rigidities of dogma and recover the mystical, relational, and inclusive core of faith. It is suspicious of metaphysical certainty, acutely aware of the limits of language, and seeks community beyond the bounds of ecclesial formalism. It is, in many ways, a theology of holy yearning - wounded by the Church, yet still haunted by the sacred.

Yet in parallel, and perhaps more surprisingly to many, is a quiet but significant return to traditional and liturgical expressions of Christianity, particularly Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and high Anglicanism. This is especially evident among younger people often raised in secular contexts, unburdened by church baggage but burdened nonetheless by the search for meaning, identity, and rootedness. This is not a retreat into nostalgia but a radical retrieval of ancient traditions, sacramental vision, and faith filled imagination. In these traditions, many are discovering not stale repetition, but a mystical grammar of life with an openness to divine presence, moral seriousness, and spiritual beauty.

Despite their surface-level differences, both movements share a common anti-modern impulse with each in its own way responding to the failures of atheism, capitalism, scientism, and moral relativism to satisfy the deeper hungers of the soul. However, I would gently suggest that these trajectories are not best understood as stages on a developmental continuum (as some metamodern theories imply), but as dialectical poles in deep and creative tension.

Here is where I want to offer a caution to some interpretations of metamodernism. In attempting to transcend the binaries of modernity and postmodernity through a “both/and” approach, metamodernism sometimes risks mistaking oscillation for transformation. It may inadvertently default to narratives of psychological or civilizational advancement without fully grappling with the cultural exhaustion, spiritual regressions, and apocalyptic ruptures now manifesting in our time.

This is why I find the dialectical frameworks of thinkers like Žižek, McGowan, and radical readings of Hegel more compelling at this juncture. For them, the dialectic is not a path of progress, but one of contradiction - a generative space where opposites collide and the Real erupts. And perhaps it is precisely in the collision between postmodern suspicion and premodern mystery that something new and yet deeply ancient is being born.
The return to tradition is not mere regression, and the move beyond theism is not simple atheism. Each is haunted by the other. And in their dynamic tension, a more paradoxical, honest, and transformative faith may yet emerge.
​
What we are witnessing is not the dawn of a unified new paradigm, but a moment of rupture and return, of radical reconfiguration. The future of the Church, I suspect, will not come from choosing sides, or harmonising opposites, or building another stage model. Rather, it may come from dwelling in the contradictions, bearing their weight and possibility without prematurely resolving them. This is not a comfortable space. It resists neat categories and clear outcomes. But it may be here, in this apocalyptic middle, in this place of paradox that the Spirit is moving again.

---

* Chaplain at The Salvation Army Australia: studied at UWE Bristol: lives in Perth, Western Australia; from Thornbury, Gloucestershire. This essay is reposted from Richard Wiltshire's Facebook page, with his permission,

Response

Jay McDaniel

As Richard Wiltshire explains, two spiritual trajectories are emerging today: one deconstructs rigid religion in search of mystical, inclusive authenticity, while the other returns to ancient liturgical traditions in pursuit of depth, beauty, and rootedness. Both respond to the failures of modernity and remain, in different ways, haunted by one another. The two traditions are the new traditionalism and postmodern progressivism.

While metamodernism seeks to transcend such oppositions with a both/and imagination, it risks overlooking the deeper ruptures, contradictions, and apocalyptic tensions that call not for resolution but for faithful dwelling—within and between these movements. As Wiltshire suggests, the Spirit may be moving in both. It is best to find our home, without any pretense of certainty, in the apocalyptic middle, itself dynamic and unstable.
​
If Wiltshire is right, then one limitation of open and relational (process) theology is that it has spoken primarily to the progressively postmodern (or, as I prefer, the constructively postmodern) current, without yet meaningfully engaging the emerging new traditionalism. It has had a deaf ear to ritual, liturgy, sacramentalism, traditional creeds, and traditional language.  Even within the constructively postmodern context, it has often overlooked the less theistic, more mystical strands—focusing its energies on defending a loving, personal God in ways that resonate with post-evangelicals, but not necessarily with those drawn to apophatic, non-personal, or panentheistic visions of the sacred. If you are drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy, or Roman Catholicism, or high Anglicanism, you will not be at home in the dismissals of tradition that seem part of the ethos of open and relational thinking. Wiltshire’s commentary poses an important challenge: Can the open and relational tradition evolve in ways that speak meaningfully to both trajectories? Should it? Or is it best understood as serving a more focused, though relatively small, niche?

Here, it seems to me, process theology—understood as one form of open and relational theology—offers a promising option. Drawing on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, it provides a framework that honors both ancient spiritual roots and constructively postmodern sensibilities. It is capacious enough to affirm theistic visions of a loving, relational God while also embracing forms of mysticism, including non-theistic and apophatic expressions of the sacred.

For example, process theology can make room for:

• a mysticism of the creative abyss, in which all actualities—even God—are understood as self-creative expressions of a deeper creativity;
• a mysticism of radical interconnectedness, in which all entities, even in their uniqueness, are present in one another;
• a mysticism of pure potentiality, in which we awaken to a field of unrealized but real possibilities; and
• a mysticism of the present moment, in which each moment is seen as a concrescence of the universe.

All of these, and more, are living options for contemporary faith.

Moreover, process theology affirms forms of wisdom that are liturgical, symbolic, and non-discursive—deeply embedded in practice rather than proposition. In this context, words and sentences are not merely vehicles for making judgments about truth or falsehood; they are lures for feeling—invitations to experience. These lures, and the feelings they evoke, can be deeply felt in liturgical settings, where individuals come together in community. In such moments, the feelings themselves become more than personal—they become a shared atmosphere, a collective mood that envelops and binds the participants. The feelings can be means by which people experience God.
​
The danger, however, is that process theology can become too comprehensive—overly systematic and, in this way, risk becoming too "metamodern" in spirit. Such a tendency may neglect paradox, contradiction, and genuine dialectics. Richard Wiltshire’s essay offers a healthy caution against this impulse, reminding us that the Spirit does not work outside the oscillations of history but within them—blowing where it will. 

For my part, as a process theologian, I look forward to a time when new traditionalists and progressive postmoderns alike might find themselves dwelling together in a deeper oikoumene—a shared spiritual household that includes Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and high Anglicans; Quakers, Pentecostals, and Baptists; as well as people of other faiths and no faith at all. Not by collapsing their differences, but by honoring them—recognizing that unity does not require uniformity. In such an oikoumene, we might move together beyond the worst aspects of modernity: the disenchantment of the world, the severing of reason from wonder, the commodification of the sacred, the reduction of community to market, and the fragmentation of soul from world. What brings us together is not a common creed, but a shared longing—for wisdom, for beauty, for justice, for peace. And perhaps, for God.