As in Jim Bonewalds case, my church is also a small congregation in a blue-collar part of the country (and churches with 150 on the active roll or less are about 50% of PCUSA congregations BTW). I also ask the same question but not only because of this. This is a continued conversation following the Presbymergent gathering in Louisville, KY last week. My initial response is here.
The primary problems with any talk of the postmodern for which emergent is consistently indebted are:
1) I am not convinced that the postmodern and hence "emergent" applies evenly across socio-cultural frames. It is therefore a frame more attuned to cosmopolitan centers with higher education attainment among residents and who spend their leisure time enjoying cultural activities such as art, music, film, and technology. If we read various postmodern literature, it is clear that the movement has come from and is still rooted in this sort of cultural frame which, incidentally, strongly favors the left in terms of social, cultural, and political values.
2) I am not convinced that postmodern is a very radical shift in culture away from anything modern. It is true that in the 1960s there were clear protests against modernity largely from the French intelligentsia, but nonetheless, I think it is a movement within modernity no matter how you cut it (epistemology, culture, technology, architecture, etc.). It applies more to style than anything else and is therefore not something intrinsically different to how people in the US are socialized. In fact, critique and introspection are two clear hallmarks of modernity. Postmodernity just takes them to another level.
3) When we speak of "postmodern" it often lacks human agency. We speak of cultural shifts in terms of ambiguous "isms" and ideological constructs without identifying clear participants and leaders in these movements. Moreover, we tend to ignore where these agents are most active and for whom they are most important. Leaders within "emergent" only appeal to this vague and agent-free notion of the postmodern, but without identifying who is involved in this cultural movement other than an equally vague distinction of some kind of "us" versus "them." Without agency, the conversation becomes anemic towards practical actions in which one can engage to change specific social structures that are causing this or this problem in the ways we understand "church" and "theology" among other things.
4) What is affecting just about everyone, which is also something of modernity, is the movement of capital in the world and increased choice of just about everything due to pluralism. Fredric Jameson, couched in other language related to cultural manifestations of the postmodern, calls this "late capitalism." However, Peter Berger argues that if one thing that modernization does produce, it is pluralism itself. This is not only in terms of the expansion of choice that the media and marketing of goods produces, but also in terms of worldviews, ideologies, religions, and value sets. Therefore, I like to focus on a Christian understanding of judgment and choice which is like wading through much of the issues raised in "emergent" but without the academic aplomb.
I am convinced that the only bridge between a vague, abstract, and therefore socially anemic "postmodern discourse" and the pluralism and changes in capitalism that are clear in modernity is pragmatism that is buttressed by a critical theory that is not content with abstractions that tend to pervade postmodern discourses. In other words, the conversation is nice, but it is self-limited to whom it is relevant and applicable based on uneven distributions of class and cultural frames in American class and religion. If the conversation is self-limiting this way, one can only hope for very minimal structural changes in anything at all. This is why we need a pragmatic schema to ground it in language and situation where it makes sense.
Related posts:
#4 I think is the more critical point for us. I think it was Jason Clark (do you follow his blog, deepchurch?) in a panel on the emergent church at a conferenece at Calvin College is convinced the real challenge for the church is not post-modernism per se, but consumerism. I hadn't really thought about the church's response in terms of judgement and choice…i'd like to hear more about that.
Okay, barging in here where I have literally no vested interest… but I love the topic.
So my question to you both: Is it possible that the tension in the emergent conversation is that postmodernism (as an ism – as a way of viewing the world) simply doesn't gibe that well with traditional theological constructs that most pew sitters haven't even thought to rethink or reconsider?
Seems to me that postmodernism as a worldview (as a genuine way of relating to the other) is adopted by my peer group (forties-fifties) anyway without much deliberate deconstruction of the faith. The younger generations have grown up living with a postmodern lens for music, relationships, movies, culture, even politics. They are the ones with the philosophical questions that would drive a reconsideration of traditional theology.
So maybe I'm wondering what the postmodernist goals are for emergents if the theology remains largely traditional?
"Presbymergent are followers of Christ who seek continual reform of existing church structures through dynamic, open, and intentionally critical systems."
A pragmatic approach based on the above starting point would be the three DCEs and lay volunteers from different churches sharing the load of doing one VBS or one confirmation class and making it quality over quantity. Better use of resources (time, money, and people).
A pragmatic approach would be offering young adults an "emergent" service at a time and location convenient and accommodating to them in which all the surrounding PC USA churches "released" and encouraged young adults to go instead of each one trying to "create" something within each of their walls. Replace young adults above with college students too.
Why don't we take the best ministry, mission, worship service, whatever each church has to offer and maximize that to the benefit of other churches? We need to get away from each congregation being everything to everyone. That would be pragmatic.
1) i am not sure if there is a tension in emergent. but i am intentionally creating one. note that i am not doing it without purpose; i think it is a good idea on paper that needs to be tweaked for social action and for social change that non-academic types can get behind. right now, i am not sure if that is possible. although, mclaren's narrative pieces are a good entre to that.
2) the language of postmodern theories (since there is no such thing as one "ism" there in my view) is both intractable and too abstract for most people – even those who think they know what it means. "feeling" different than your parents does not mean you are postmodern , it just means that you "feel different." that's axiomatic in developmental psychology and has little if anything to do with philosophical or ideological constructs. to keep the conversation there limits different ways of thinking and different ways of acting in the world – both of which are contrary to the purpose of the conversation in the first place!
3) again, i don't think there is anything such as a postmodern worldview. we are all moderns here dealing with pluralism on unheralded levels of complexity. it's modernism on steroids if you will. nietzsche and marx were totally modern. so were kierkegaard and heidegger. derrida would not call himself postmodern and rorty was a pragmatist that postmodern people just adopted because it 'sounded' like non-foundationalism. and onward. there are only a few self-consciously postmodern theorists: baudrillard and haraway are two.
4) to your point about college-educated boomers i agree. older people call it postmodern, younger people could care less what you call it. to them its life.
i like the idea of something ecumenical. since one of the notions in emergent is to have less structured social and theological boundaries it seems palatable from that view. from another view, it makes sense given the fluid and almost artificial boundaries of denomination on belief systems these days. we fear ecumenism because it eliminates corporate boundaries. but we have to accept the realities that wuthnow first wrote about followed by wills, roozen, chaves and others that denomination and theological views are no longer mutually exclusive. maybe we have been trying to change that for so long that we have become immune to accepting it as an irreversible social reality? it is something that we cannot change and i know of not a single sociological view that would say we can. think about it for a bit.
[...] raised a really good question in response to this post (which followed up this post) to which I responded, but want to repost here. His question: A [...]
Nice: "older people call it postmodern, younger people could care less what you call it. to them its life."
I agree about modernism on steroids (only I wonder if it's more like modernism on anti-depressants <g>). Seems like we're gravitating toward pluralism out of the same kind of exhaustion moderns feel toward the limits of science, philosophical/religious truth and uncritical trust in the institutions of society. Pluralism and complexity are overwhelming. One way to deal is to abdicate judgment (more than to cultivate tolerance, empathy, understanding).
So I like your thinking. Will be interesting to see where you take it with the emergent conversation. I suppose one disappointment I have in that movement is that there seems to be a need to come to the discussion of faith with theological presuppositions… Perhaps that is desired or even necessary. I found it limiting when I was trying to unravel my faith. I didn't know why I should "stop" examining just because there was a specific doctrine that someone else held to be one that should be trusted without challenge.
What do you think?
There you go making me think
Presuppositions are necessary only in so far as we cannot come to any knowledge without them. However, they are not necessary to maintain and I would argue that if we want to expand and clarify the nature of truth as a correspondence between our minds and reality, that our presuppositions must be challenged and reconfigured. In fact our presuppositions do change and reconfigure whether we like it or not. This is as true for a unitarian universalist as it is for a fundamentalist. Some will accept that change is inevitable, while others will, as you say, abdicate judgment. this is why pluralism has two powerful religious effects: liberal relativism and dogmatic fundamentalism. Neither of these positions approaches much at all with critical judgment since the former is acceptance of everything and every system and the latter is a rejection of anything outside of a preconceived system.
I have argued before that all doctrine, including those that we read in the bible, are socially and therefore cognitively mutable. Jesus makes that clear with his relationship to the religious and political authorities by breaking those assumed systems. Part of his revelation is a continuation of the biblical notion of human frailty compared to the durability of the Kingdom of God. All human institutions are imperfect and demand that we adapt them to a continuing revelation – not a revelation that stopped when the bible was politically canonized. Otherwise, God is truly dead and all we have is a book of myth and history. Jesus may as well have never raised from the dead at all.
[...] commented on this post saying: Seems like we"re gravitating toward pluralism out of the same kind of exhaustion [...]
There you go making me think
Presuppositions are necessary only in so far as we cannot come to any knowledge without them. However, they are not necessary to maintain and I would argue that if we want to expand and clarify the nature of truth as a correspondence between our minds and reality, that our presuppositions must be challenged and reconfigured. In fact our presuppositions do change and reconfigure whether we like it or not. This is as true for a unitarian universalist as it is for a fundamentalist. Some will accept that change is inevitable, while others will, as you say, abdicate judgment. this is why pluralism has two powerful religious effects: liberal relativism and dogmatic fundamentalism. Neither of these positions approaches much at all with critical judgment since the former is acceptance of everything and every system and the latter is a rejection of anything outside of a preconceived system.
I have argued before that all doctrine, including those that we read in the bible, are socially and therefore cognitively mutable. Jesus makes that clear with his relationship to the religious and political authorities by breaking those assumed systems. Part of his revelation is a continuation of the biblical notion of human frailty compared to the durability of the Kingdom of God. All human institutions are imperfect and demand that we adapt them to a continuing revelation – not a revelation that stopped when the bible was politically canonized. Otherwise, God is truly dead and all we have is a book of myth and history. Jesus may as well have never raised from the dead at all.