Postmodernism, the emerging church and evangelicalism: Part 1a
(by Alan Roxburgh, 5-3-07) : "At the end of February I was in Dallas directing
the first formal meeting of the Allelon Missional Schools Project. We had
gathered twenty-four seminaries from across North America to initiate a multi
year project that will engage the question of
how a missional theology might shape theological education and
leadership formation in consultation with the local church.... As
presidents, deans, faculty and board members came together, many commented that
five years ago it wouldn’t have been possible to gather such a theologically
disparate group of schools from a wide set of traditions and histories.
"
The
question was asked: Why at this time? A common answer emerging from those
discussions could be summarized under the single word: Identity. There was a
common sense that what was happening in the social environment of North America,
whether we call it a late modern or postmodern shift or a globalization of the
culture or a
pluralization of values and perspectives or the emergence of a
non-foundationalist
context ... they are each an accurate image of the multi-complex
environment in which we find ourselves..... As one school president put it in a
somewhat functionalist manner: 'The churches for which we were established to
theologically form leaders doesn’t exist anymore and we’re in a place where we
have to
re-imagine our very identity as a school....
"As a missiologist whose work has been shaped by
Newbigin’s question about a missional engagement with our own culture I want
explore the first question about the role of theology. ... [B]oth the
postmodern turn and some of the emerging experiments in church life
assists us address the question of the role of theology, especially in
terms of the theologian relationship to the identity and vocation of the local
church as
the mission-shaped community of God’s emerging future....
"....a southern Episcopalian minister said:
'Al, I read that book about the pastor, and it describes my life to a tee – I
couldn’t put it down.' Another, this time a Presbyterian from the mid-West said:
'My wife came to me with this book from Brian M [A
New Kind of Christian?] and she said: ‘You’ve got to read this,
its about you!’” ... They can describe the massive new presences in their
lives that have turned ministry into a confusing moment for almost all of
them.... But they were also telling me that the formal systems of response
within which they were trained does not come close to engaging the realities of
their everyday lives....
"...all these pastors were
from evangelical traditions of one kind of another. They were telling
stories of how, in these evangelical churches, many of their people have been
coming to them to say that
these books by Brian M and others are describing their lives.... It is
not so much giving knowledge of God’s nature as it is speaking about the
God who is confessed but that confession is situated and contextualized...."
Postmodernism, the emerging church and evangelicalism: Part 1b: "One of the
important sociologists of the last half of the 20th century is the Polish Jew,
Zygmunt Bauman.... A metaphor he uses to describe the present experiences of
people in western societies is that used by
Marx more than a hundred and fifty years ago as industrialization,
capitalism and Darwinian modernity coalesced in the emerging industrial
cities of Manchester and London...: 'All that is solid melts into air, all that
is…'
"The husband, Mike, is a recently retired
principle in his late 50s whose whole life has been shaped by allegiance and
attendance within
Christian Reformed churches. His vocational life has been spent in
teaching and leading in their
Christian School movement. Again, I was taken aback by the questions he
was just waiting to ask me. Did I know Brian M? Had I read…? Then it
poured out – these books are describing him! It’s the first time in a
long time, he tells me, that someone is writing in such way that his experience
of the
culture and his faith are being connected and brought into dialogue. He
tells me that for the first time in a long time he is finding himself energized
again by his faith.
"Then he wants to know more about
postmodernism and emerging church. He’s reading books and is
energized by what he finds there in contrast to what he tells me about
his Sunday mornings. He wants to find out about these emerging churches because
now he’s blogging on numerous sites and discovering that out there experiments
are happening that seem to be
trying to understand how to be Christian in this strange new world were
we find ourselves. Finally, he pops the question: Do I know anyplace where he
and his wife can find one of these postmodern, emergent churches because he
can’t deal with the church that formed his whole life anymore?...
"One can go back to the beginning of the
last century and hear similar critiques.
George Lukacs [Marxist]
argued that in modernity the basic form of existence governing society... was a
certain kind of rationality focused on forms of objectively established truth
universally available to everyone.
Method was the dominant motif for discovering these evidential truths
made clear either through the categories of mind or the revelation of God.
Method made truth plain and method made the world ours....
"The
Frankfurt School
reflected a similar critique.... What is relatively new is that other narratives
have entered the stage, flown across the sky with criticisms and questions about
the social imaginary of modernity. The postmodern turn and the hermeneutical
turn have raised serious questions about the assumptions within which this
modernity has operated. The depth and speed with which these counter narratives
have entered the culture and gone deep into the lifeworld and ethos of North
America is stunning. The postmodern turn has practically evaporated the meaning
systems and markers that once gave substantive continuity to people’s lives....
"... people have less and less ability to give language to what they are
experiencing and, therefore, less and less capacity to
name what God might be up to in this strange new world."