The Postmøderner

My friend Jeremy has a great take on what post-modernism means for the church in America. I’ve invited him to join the discussion and he jumped in eagerly. BEWARE! THE LONG EXCERPT THAT FOLLOWS IS PASSIONATE AND THOUGHT OUT. I will respond to his ideas before the week is out.

Rethinking Church in a Postmodern Culture…

Much of what defines contemporary American pop-culture church life is really just the lingering remnants of a movement and cultural style long gone. In the United States, the number of contemporary evangelical and/or charismatic non-denominational churches (generally included in the category of American Protestantism) has increased exponentially since the late 1950s.

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An interesting page on postmodernism… a great resource for the big picture view.

POMO 

A Baker Academic hosted blog: just found it, highly recommend. churchandpomo.typepad.com James K. A. Smith and other great authors often post here.  Fabulous resource. 

You know, Christians have a lot of ideas about the word ‘postmodern.’ I’ve come up against two very extreme opinions about it:

1) Very positive… the church should accept that the world is postmodern and should just embrace it, in order to reach people. A lot of Christians are starting to say “I’m postmodern”… so, obviously, the don’t think it’s an evil thing.

2) Very negative… the church should fight against postmodernism, it’s a relative, pluralistic ideology that is destroying our society and the church should completely stand against it… therefore, Christians who call themselves ‘postmodern’ come under fire.

I would say what I think, but I’m gonna leave it there… ’cause I want to hear what YOU THINK!

A friend of mine tried to post this on the blog recently, but for some reason couldn’t.  So, he sent it to me.  It brings up some great issues for the church.  I’ll respond to it within a couple of days.  Thanks for your thoughts, Josh!

I just wanted to let you know that I really enjoy this journal that you have.. I am also a “postmoderner”.. . I feel like there many parts of our religious ways that need to be questioned and tested. The way we do Sunday morning services or the out reaches we do. This…. to me isn’t a radical movement but a revised continuation of the constant amendment of Christianity… To change it for the better without compromising solid theology based on the Bible.

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This is one of the best articles I have found on two subjects that I am very interested in, the first being postmodernism (as a Continental philosophy movement) and Radical Orthodoxy (the only real Christian response to that philosophy). And this article does a great job explaining both. Enjoy.

btw, Irn.

(By the way, I reject nihilism.) 

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 So, as I was saying before…

I don’t think God is a figment of our imagination, not individually and not collectively.  I believe that He is objectively there!  Right there is the problem for modernism.  The “I believe…” is the first step to the nuthouse.  Belief is bushed, which is a synonym of cracked, which is another word for nuts (I love the thesaurus).  In all seriousness, when somebody says that they believe in something unexplainable, moderners immediately treat them as if they were asinine!  (And then they call the believer a bigot)

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A couple days ago, I was reading in Numbers about Balaam, the non-Israelite prophet who knew the living God and was contracted to put a curse on the Israelite community.   The amazing thing about the story is this.  Read the rest of this entry »

Wikipedia has a great article on postmodernism.   Under “Philosophical Movements and contributors”, there is a great list of key authors as well.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernists One of the things that I found out reading this article that I did not know before is that postmodernism was coined in relation to ARCHITECTURE!  I was like, “WHAT?!!”  

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