Amen Bro!

some great insight here
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0310/articles/hart.html

http://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr07/kierk1.html

I have been thinking about your point #4 over the past week: If only I understood what moderist Christianity is, then maybe I would have some idea of what postmodern Christianity is.

People seem to believe their modernist Christianity is True Christianity. Probably much of it is, but the part that proves to be modernist ought to be fair game for criticism. In any case, not knowing that your Christian beliefs are rooted in modernity doesn’t mean that they are not.

Also, the fact that a Christian claims to be against postmodernism, does not mean that they are not influenced by this mood. For example, I seem to have noticed Christians disregarding or attacking reason as a way of knowing. (if postmodernism is indeed anti-reason. I’m not sure.)

Not even Brian McLaren will discuss about post-modernism in normative terms. He discusses the “three postmodernisms” here.

The follow McLaren quote has been most helpful in understanding what movement seems to be about:

“merging postmodernism agrees that modern reductionistic rationalism needed to be stopped or “deconstructed,” and it sees that relativist pluralism “worked” as a chemotherapeutic agent, but it doesn’t mistake this dangerous short-term medical necessity as a long-term regimen for health. It seeks to move beyond relativistic pluralism, and sees “emergent thinking” and “integralism” as better alternatives to both modern reductionistic rationalism and relativist pluralism.”

http://people.cedarville.edu/employee/millsd/mills_staley_response.pdf

http://www.anewkindofchristian.com/archives/000071.html

http://danielkearns.blogspot.com/

Regarding ‘modern’ Christianity: Would the majority of the Christian movements towards excessive emotionalism and sentiment since the nineteenth century (or even earlier) not be characterized as agressively anti-modern, that is, either a retreat from excessive rationalism’s implied ‘defeat’ of the validity of faith or an outright ‘attack’ on the one-sidedness of the rationalist argument? In that regard, is ‘post-modern’ Christianity not already an attempt at integration, in terms of meeting the secular culture at a half-way point?

mclaren has written, for example, that postmodern thinkers heroically searched the past for dominating worldviews like Marxism and then “sought to undermine their dominance.” but a laundry list of the postmodern authors i read in school–Zizek, Derrida, Said, Jameson, Althusser, Eagleton, Foucault, J Hillis Miller, Cixous, Irigaray, Chomsky, Spivak, Paul de Man, et al–reads like a who’s who list of Marxists and Marxist sympathizers. thus, i just have no idea what mclaren was talking about, or which postmodern thinkers/authors he had in mind. (and if anyone here knows, please enlighten me?)

anyway, postmodernism rests on the poststructural assumptions about language–it is, as i understand it, a linguistic argument, ultimately, and that’s precisely what “modernist” fundamentalists who attack postmodernism don’t seem to understand. even as they write essays that attack postmodernism, the text of their polemic is deconstructing.

Raschke talks about the correspondence theory of language, or propostional (theo-) logic, and that “modernist” conception of language is precisely what poststructuralism/postmodernism undermines. i have never read a “modernist” fundamentalist who could mount a cogent attack against the best of postmodernism, and an example of that might be Lacan’s assertions here: http://www.chairetmetal.com/cm04/reli2.htm

anyway, i love what emergent’s doing, and i love what the “modernist” fundamentalists are doing, but i can’t say i “belong” to either camp (and that’s probably an indication of postmodern influence). (lol) or better, perhaps i belong to both.

your number 7 is “the big one” for me too. at the end of it all, i’m just someone who loves Christ and is doing the best i can with what i have. i’m trying to work out my salvation, and that is taking place in a postmodern context. does that make me a second class christian?… probably. but i’m just doing the best i can with what i have…

“20To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22To the weak I became weak, to win the weak.

…

To the hippies, I became a Jesus people, that I might win hippies.

To the pointy-headed intellectuals, I became a pointy-headed intellectual like St. Augustine or C.S. Lewis, that I might win intellectuals.

To the homosexual offenders, I became a broken and compassionate person, an outcast that I might win homosexual offenders.

To the postmodernists, I became a postmodernist, that I might win postmodernists.

…I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.

—-

Respectfully,

Brian P.

Huh? A bit of caricature, you think? Hey, if EC folks want to open their Bibles up and read a story, please, ***BY ALL MEANS, DO SO!*** It seems the *individual’s narrative* and *culture’s narrative* are what is being preached as gospel, not the primary one we’ve already been given.

I haven’t heard anyone (including D.A. Carson) complain, “Gosh, those EC folks won’t stop reading Bible stories!” The complaint is that expository preaching has overwhelmingly been abandoned. People aren’t getting much Bible intake.