Part of me is baffled by the overwhelmingly negative and fearful accounts of postmodernism in general that come from the conservative church sector. It makes no sense to me because the same sector that labels postmodernism the refuge of secular liberals labels the post-enlightenment liberal Christianity (e.g. Bultmann and his ilk) that postmoderns are (rightly) incredulous toward as secular humanists in Christian's clothing.
In other words, postmoderns and conservative Christians have 'enemies' in common. Or at least targets of incredulity in common.
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What I personally have found is that the further I gravitate toward postmodern understandings (i.e. stories of understanding), the further I have gravitated away from Protestant liberalism (my implicit assumptions coming into all of this) and toward a comfortably conservative theology.
For instance, in a postmodern schema, a text has to be approached on its own terms. Unlike in liberal Protestantism, the Bible does not need to be dismantled and made to resemble Rationalist or Enlightenment ideals. Old-Testament narratives stand on their own - though by no means divorced in meaning from other books of the Bible or the Bible as a whole (or, for that matter, from the history of Biblical understanding and the way that that history and those narratives themselves have informed our own lives: intertextuality) - without a need to draw abstract propositional truths from them, or excise the 'Jewish' elements, or any other misguided Enlightenment project.
This is only one example, but my point is that postmodern studies always lead me back to a position that I think most conservative opponents of postmodernism itself and of the emerging church movement in general would be quite comfortable with. Hence my bafflement.
Comments? Ideas? Critiques? Thank you.
1 comment:
Nick Don,
This is something that I've noticed as well. One thing that I have picked up on when I talk to critics of postmodern Christians is that they are fearful of reading anything written by a postmodern author. It's as if they think Derrida and Lyotard will possess their souls, and they will be thrown into Hell without judgment. So they read critiques by men like John MacArthur and Mark Driscoll and feed off of what they tell them instead of approaching the philosophy themselves. I guess it just shows the tendency the church has to run in fear when it comes to researching and thinking for one's own self.
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