Do We Need A Postmodern Church?

June 06, 2003

Category: Postmodernism

“‘Do we need a postmodern church?’ Sometimes I wonder why we don’t just say no, but I think we need to keep wrestling with the question.

“…we come to distrust dominant worldviews or interpretations partly because we are less sure that they are true but also because we have become aware of how certain groups wield power by means of these worldviews or interpretations. Postmodern theory consists of a number of strategies for undermining the force and legitimacy of the ruling metanarrative and installing in its place a plurality of interpretations. But with this disintegration of meaning also goes a decentralization of power, away from the privileged centre to the disenfranchized minorities.

“…we have become aware of the fact that we are being manipulated by advertizing, we know how to deconstruct the language of advertizing; but we still play along with the game, we allow ourselves to be controlled in this way, we still basically trust the marketing message.”

“Either we would find our sense of being Christian shattered beyond repair; or we would have to start building a new (but not less biblical) ‘orthodoxy’. This is the hard part—most experiments in postmodern church either pull up short (a veneer of postmodern style over an unreconstructed core) or go too far (a veneer of faith over intellectual chaos).”

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Posted by pablohart on June 06, 2003 01:17 PM

Comments

Do we need a postmodern church?
for some reason (i can't figure out which), this seems like the wrong question. just thinking out loud now... maybe it should be "Does God need a postmodern church?" or even "Does postmodernity (the era) need a Church?" i dunno. are we approaching this from the correct angle? were the Reformers answering YES to the question "Does Modernity need the Church?" seems more like they were answering YES to the question "Does the Church need to be Modernized."

but a main difference is that the tenets of Modernism were built with doctrinal ideology, and Postmodernism, by definition, cannot be singularly Christian. i know i've said it here many times before, but we ALWAYS need to separate the stylistic notion of PMism from the ideological framework of PMism. if the question is "Do we need an ideologically postmodern church?" then the answer is most certainly NO. but if you're talking about a Church which flavors itself with postmodern seasonings as it seeks palatability among new generations, then i suppose the answer is YES.

Posted by Nathan at June 7, 2003 12:26 PM

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