Think the postmodern shift is over? Duuuude. The fun is just beginning. It's all a lot BIGGER than we thought. It seems we are leaving the Big Story of dominance, reason and everlasting progress. This is serious. This is really BIG. We have been under the captivity of an overly rational Greek worldview for 2500 years (5000 years if you trace the basics back to Egypt and Mesopotamia) and now, in the midst of our chaotic postmodern period, it is all coming to an end.

Values are shifting A re-balancing is going on. Nature more than humanity Female more than male. Child more than adult. Story more than statement. Primitive communities more than civilized man. Unconscious more than conscious. Dream more than idea. Desire more than reason. Body more than soul.

We are leaving Plato and Aristotle behind. This is good news to some and bad

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news to others. Aussie James Thwaites reckons it is good news. "My conviction is that the postmodern period gives the Christian and the church the ability to come out from under centuries of Greek influence and take hold of the worldview God intended us to have all along." Dr. Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, says it is bad news. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a postmodern, post-Christian, post-western cultural crisis, which threatens the very heart of our culture."

Is it a good thing to be post-Western? No, if being western is inherently good, ethically righteous and universally needed. If God wants us to be Western and the rest of the world to be Western, then Mohler is right in calling it a crisis to our culture. However, if being Western is problematic and a hindrance to God's plans for the planet, then being post-Western might not be all bad. Perhaps we need to be less Western and more like Jesus?

Tomb Raider. A post-Western movie based on a computer game. Lara Croft (yes, the star is female), finds herself in a race against the ultra-Western Illuminati (very, very bad people who are driven by a greedy desire to dominate the world). She beats them in a race to their destination by getting wisdom and clues from primitive people, children, intuition and the presence of a rare flower (nature). And her Eastern meditation techniques help center her and get the edge over the Illuminati. Watch it sometime and check for the other elements of post-Western culture.

Dumpster Diving

In the postmodern conversation, Christian writers have not been quick to recommend the way forward into the new thing. And even more silent in regards to being post-Western. We are all treading carefully. Still, there are some good places to start the journey. This is all part of what I call "Dumpster Diving" - the second stage of our journey out of the old paradigm and into the new. If you remember from last week's Skinny, there were three stages in this journey:

1. Barn-Burning (de-construction) 2. Dumpster-Diving (exploration) 3. Lego-Land (rebuilding). Last week I was not sure about the term "Lego-Land". But one reader sent a great email saying I should definitely include it. Thanks Scott Mathis.

Here are some spiritual journeys that helping people survive the post-Western transition.

1. Going Hebrew. Many Christian adventurers are starting wth the Hebrew worldview. Mark Driscoll, of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, has gone back to look at the Hebrew "Midrash" to find new ways of seeing truth emerge out of the tension of conflicting veiwpoints. http://www.marshill.fm Tom Hohstadt, at The Boaz Project kick off in Austin Texas (2000), challenged us to begin thinking and communicating with a Hebrew mind instead of a Greek (Judeo-Christian) mind. He spoke of the "Damah", the Old Testament word for 'prophetic metaphor' that emerges in the tension between the known and the unknown. http://www.futurechurch.net/ James Thwaites lays out the Hebrew worldview in great detail in his book entitled, The Church Beyond The Congregation: The Strategic Role of the Church in the Postmodern Era. "The church has inherited a vision of the universe (creation) that has been split in two by Plato, Aquinas and Descartes." This two level building, aruges Thwaites, has been inhabited by the Pentecostals, Catholics and holiness stream in the upper story. The lower story where the rational dimension was pursued, was chosen by the Reformed and fundamentalist streams. Thwaites believes the way forward is to take a second look at the Hebrew worldview, which by the way, is not the same as Mohler's "Judeo-Christian" worldview. The Hebrews had a cosmology that did not divide the spirit and human realms. Instead, they "encountered divine reality in their everyday life and work in creation."

2. Going Celtic. Although I see much value in re-examining the Hebrew mind, I am not yet convinced that we should stay there. In 1997 I did a one year pilgrimage/journey into the Celtic Christian worldview and found a similar cosmology that embraced a healthy understanding of creation, women, arts, community, play, work, spiritual warfare and more. Others have also journeyed into Celtic history. Pete Grieg and the 24/7 prayer ministry and have gained much by looking at their Celtic heritage. "New Celts", a book co-written by Roger Ellis, is a great way to explore the Celtic legacy without getting trapped in a dead Celtic ritualism.

3. Going Non-Western. Tuning into theologies from around the world is another way to understand God from new angles. They are often more holistic, more integrative of everyday life, the family, and work. "African missions do not distuinguish between the spiritual and the material", says Roswirth Gerloff. And lets not forget that the non-Western can be found in our own countries, although usually in the margins. Native Americans, like Richard Twiss in Washington, have much to say about a home-grown theology for USA. Black Americans, Latinos and Asian immigrants also offer a walk with God that is often more holistic and relevant to postmodern culture. Rudy Carrasco, at www.urbanramps.com is one of those voices. He is a Latino, who married an African American and last year purchased a Kareoke machine for their community's worship.

4. Going Early-Modern Now here's a novel idea. There is some good stuff in the early stages of modernity that is worth a second look. David Tracy, in "The Hopeful Paradox of Dupre's Modernity" examines what Lewey said about the "fragments" of our heritage. These fragments, both pre-modern and modern, and the fragments of non-Western cultures and postmodern thinkers as well, may become possible "bricks of a future synthesis." I like that because the "bricks" confirm my Lego-Land terminology. I also like it because Dupre challenges us to go dumpster-diving into early modernity (14th to 17th centuries) to find cultural resources. Those of us throwing stones at modernity should realise that the excesses of 19th century modernism (and the convulsions of late modernity in the 20th century) may give us an easy and ugly target but may not accurately define the whole period of modernity. We are quick to jump on modernists like Mohler and others who get stuck at Derrida's doorstop and criticise only the deconstrucion movement without looking at the more optimisitc, affirmative postmodernims of recent times (read last weeks Skinny). But we may be just as guilty of misrepresentation when we pick out the worst of the Enlightenment and use it to color the last 500 years. Dupre saves us by offering another journey to take in looking for new lego blocks - and they lie hidden in the Renaissance and the Baroque. Have you checked out Dante? (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/116/11.0.html)

The challenge of being the church in a "postmodern, post-Christian, post-Western" culture (or if I can re-state Mohler by saying 'post-Enlightenment, Post-Constantine, Post-Platonic' culture) should be a opportunity that we do not shy away from . We came up with "Good News For Modern Man." Lets do it again with Good News for postmodern, post-Western people. Amen.

Next week - Lets move away from postmodernity from the philosophical and historical point of view. lets take a Captain Cook at physics. We'll talk about Time and Space. Send me your thoughts and I might include them.

Andrew Jones is a recovering fundamentalist. He sometimes relapses into knee-jerk reactions against new thinking and at other times ventures out dangerously to read things of intellectual interest that he was not previously allowed to read. He currently travels around the world to help young people start spiritual movements in the global emerging culture. He is proud to be a part of the Baptist General Convention of Texas. Andrew blogs daily at http://tallskinnykiwi.blogspot.com The Skinny Series on Postmodernity is a work in progress. Your input is appreciated so, please, throw me a bone at tallskinnykiwi@hotmail.com

Bibliography

Christian Sprituality and the Culture of Modernity: The Thought of Louis Dupre, ed. by P.J. Casarella, 1998, Eerdmans. "The Drama of Modern Western Identity", by David Gress, Foreign Policy Research Institute, Volume 1, Number 2, December 1997 http://www.fpri.org/ww/0102.199712.gress.dramaofmodernwesternidentity.html Global Missiology For the 21st Century, edited by William Taylor, WEF, 2000, Baker. "Globalization and the Transformation of Christianity", Philip Jenkins, FPRI, Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan 2002, http://www.fpri.org/ww/0301.200201.jenkins.globalizationtransformchristianit y.html "The Significance of The African Christian Diaspora in Europe", by Roswith Gerloff, International Review of Mission, edited by Jacques Matthey, Vol LXXXXIX No. 354, July 2000 "Transforming Culture: Christian Truth Confronts Post-Christian America", by R. A. Mohler, Fidelitas, Commentary on Theology and Culture http://www.sbts.edu/mohler/fidelitas/culture.html Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission, by David Bosch, 1991, Orbis. Utopian Dreams and Nightmares, by John Clark, Anarchism: Community and Utopia, edited by L. Sekelj, 1993, Filosoficky ustak AV CR (Prague) Voices From The Margin: Interpreting The Bible in the Third World, edited by R.S. Sugirtharajah, 1991, SPCK.

Going Further.

Are we really post-Western?

In a word, yes. David R. Gress, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, says that the 1990's were "undeniably a post-Western age". Missiologist David Bosch announced that "The West's grand schemes, at home and in the Third World, have virtually all failed dismally." How long were we Western?

If we take the basic tenets of Westernism (reason, science, democracy, etc) and trace them back then the Big Story started a really long time ago, longer actually than Plato. David Gress suggests 5000 years. "In its basic form, the grand narrative followed an axis that spanned five millennia, from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia to mid-twentieth-century America. It was a history of reason, democracy, and economic growth. Its authors assumed that progress was real, objectively definable, and universally desirable."

Finding a Cosmology in the Post-Western world.

Whatever journey we find ourselves on in our search for a workable explanation of God's present dealings with us, we must work towards a decent cosmology. Matthew Fox's main criticism of the evangelical church is the lack of a cosmology. Although I disagree strongly with his panentheistic creation theology (which fails to seperate creation from its Creator), Fox's critique is accurate: the church needs a cosmology that can adequately explain the multi-dimension universe, the space-time realities (we will tackle this next week) and purpose of creation's existence. Crawling back into the empty womb of modernism will not yield an appropriate cosmology. The Hebrew creation theology, and the Celtic, is a good place to start.

The Joy of Being Post-Colonial

If post-Westernism means post-colonization, (and I spell colonization with a "z" because the Americans are currently colonis(z)ing the English language) then the future of missions and global theology looks a whole lot brighter than it did a few years ago. The modernism of Western theology and ecclesiology has in many cases crippled the new churches.
A friend from Zimbabwe told me that the churches under his care were struggling because the modern worldview that came with the missionaries did not allow for power encounters with evil spirits. And no, I didn't ask him about the pipe-organs that we shipped to them.
There are non-Western theologians who are NOT grieving over the decreasing power of Western dominance. One of them is the Sri Lankan theologian, R. S Sugirtharajah. "To date, biblical interpretation has been in the hands of male, Euro-American scholars. Their academies and scholary guilds have been the arena where hermeneutical theories, interpretive constructs and exegetical discourses were worked out, and from where they were exported to other cultures and contexts as having universal validity." (from Voices From The Margin, p. 2).
Another is Jean-Marc Ela in Cameroon, who states "The God of missionary preaching was a God so distant, so foreign to the history of the colonized peoples." (from "A Black African Perspective: An African Reading of Exodus")
Joseph D'Souza in Hyderabad, India has the same idea. "The Christian captivity to Greek philosophical systems must end. In our opinion, it has gone on for too long. Indian philosophical thought has many strands that will shed further light and understanding under the guidance of the Holy Spirit on much truth in the Scripture."

John Clark, in a lecture about Utopia, contrasts Plato's Republic (which he calls a Utopia of Power) with Lao Tzu's "Tao te Ching" (a Utopia of Freedom). The Republic represents the effort of civilized rationality to overcome the forces of resistance that threaten it. These forces are the same enemies that Odysseus encounters in his adventures in mythical form. [Dont want to read Greek mythology? No problem - watch "O Brother, Where Art Thou" for a modern version of Homer's Odyssey] These forces are "the power of nature, desire, the unconscious, the primitive, the feminine." Clark describes the quest of Western rationalism as one in which all contradictions must be cancelled out and replaced by a heirachy of domination (reason over desire, form over matter, soul over body, male over female, adult over child, humanity over nature, civilized man over the primitive, unconscious over conscious, etc). Here we have not only the western-eastern tension but also much of the modern-postmodern debate - the reassertion of the "Other' which has been subjugated by the Dominant.

Mohler's comments.

Is he right? well, yes, our culture is being threatened by these elements. But some of us think that our present church culture is not always ethically superior or worthy of export. Rather, we have backslid over the years into embracing capitalism, an unhealthy independence, the worship of self, the abuse of the environment and the persecution of margin-dwellers. Unbelievers no longer are attracted by the light of American Cultural Christianity. Some pagans think themselves more spiritual than church people. We are in a sorry state and guess what - our modernistic Christianity is to blame for much of it. Is our church culture really worth shielding from the critics arrows? If our church culture is damaged, relevant to a generation-now-gone, and in desperate need of re-thinking and redeeming, then, duuuude, lets re-examine it. The church is continually confronted with a changing world. Our goal is not to preserve church culture but to preserve the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is this gospel that must stay the same. The only way for us to keep it the same is to change. Sameness is therefore the goal of our change, for if we do not change, then the gospel loses its relevancy.