Postmodern Christianity?
Clicking around here and there, I keep running across the term postmodern as applied to theology and church. I’m not quite sure what people mean by postmodern religion, and I suspect that the more I try to figure it out, the more at a loss I’ll be. I suspect its meaning is determined by who you ask and on what day.
When I think postmodern church, I picture high energy, performance based services, casual (very casual) dress, messages put forth in flashy sound bites, and an absence of any large demands on a person’s commitment in terms of time, service, or even lifestyle choices. In place of large demands would be a kind of playful hopefulness that church could provide “momentary stays against confusion” as Robert Frost once said of poetry.
For the more serious members, there’d be small group discussions in which people read Derrida and Ecclesiastes side by side making lots of notes in the margins about signifiers and grand narratives and ah, vanity of vanities.
I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I want from church. Honestly, if I wanted to go to Sunday School with Roland Barthes, I’d just head over to the coffee shop on Sunday mornings and have a latte with the other depressed poets. No matter what people might say, you know, nobody really wants the Author to be dead.
I don’t want a hip-hop church; neither do I want a Puritan throw-back. I just want a—dare I say it?—Jesus-centered church, one that really practices and preaches that old “love one another” routine.
Oh, well. Like it or not this is the information age, and the people who stay in the game are the people who know how to ride the new waves of knowledge, so I’ll probably try to actually find out what this postmodern Christian thing is all about and not just make it up as I go along. Maybe I’ll even give it a chance. Maybe. :)
When I think postmodern church, I picture high energy, performance based services, casual (very casual) dress, messages put forth in flashy sound bites, and an absence of any large demands on a person’s commitment in terms of time, service, or even lifestyle choices. In place of large demands would be a kind of playful hopefulness that church could provide “momentary stays against confusion” as Robert Frost once said of poetry.
For the more serious members, there’d be small group discussions in which people read Derrida and Ecclesiastes side by side making lots of notes in the margins about signifiers and grand narratives and ah, vanity of vanities.
I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I want from church. Honestly, if I wanted to go to Sunday School with Roland Barthes, I’d just head over to the coffee shop on Sunday mornings and have a latte with the other depressed poets. No matter what people might say, you know, nobody really wants the Author to be dead.
I don’t want a hip-hop church; neither do I want a Puritan throw-back. I just want a—dare I say it?—Jesus-centered church, one that really practices and preaches that old “love one another” routine.
Oh, well. Like it or not this is the information age, and the people who stay in the game are the people who know how to ride the new waves of knowledge, so I’ll probably try to actually find out what this postmodern Christian thing is all about and not just make it up as I go along. Maybe I’ll even give it a chance. Maybe. :)
posted by Sharon Gerald | 6:42 PM
2 Comments:
I can only agree wholeheartedly with your description of the hip hop post-mods. I recently sat with a group of them who are starting a post-mod fellowship. They spent two hours talking about what color to paint the walls to appeal to the largest number of people.
I thought I was in the twilight zone.
I can't blame people for doing what they think they need to do to attract new members or to reach out to people they believe will not participate in traditional services. I just don't really get the appeal of having drums drowning out the congregation as they repeat the same two lines over and over. Unless it's for youth, it doesn't really seem much like worship to me.
I know there are studies on how to get the unchurched Gen-Xers engaged in religious activities once more, and I know there are people who understand a whole lot more about this than I do. I just think that even po-mo Gen-Xers care more in the end about whether you've won their respect than about how well you've entertained them. Just a hunch...
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