Q & R: Postmodernism redux
Here’s the Q:
http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/000018.html
The above link is from 2003 in response to Mclaren’s letter to Chuck Colsen’s “unfair” description of post modernism. While reading it, I kept wondering, ok, since Colsen has it wrong about what post modernism IS, what are the TRUE beliefs of adherents to Post Modernism? How are they different from Classical Evangelicals?
Here’s the R:
This recent post from emergentvillage.com gives a good beginning of a reply …
From MINemergent
The Postmodern Condition
“Many people fervently hope that postmodernism–whatever they mean by it–will go away. And a lot of them are going to get their wish: styles will change, of course. Some of the intellectual movements that have landed at the top of the academic pecking order will be deposed. Postmodernisms will come and go, but postmodernity–the postmodern condition–will still be here. It is a major transition in human history, a time of rebuilding all the foundations of civilization, and the world is going to be occupied with it for a long time to come. We are all emerging from out of the security of our tribes, traditions, religions and worldviews into a global civilization that is dazzlingly, overwhelmingly pluralistic.”
Walter Truett Anderson
The Truth about the Truth
I’d only add that few if any of us would call ourselves adherents to Post Modernism. We seek to be followers of God in the way of Jesus, living and working in an increasingly postmodern context. You might say that Classical Evangelicals have sought to be followers of God in the way of Jesus in a highly modern context. That entails some differences, of course, but those differences don’t have to be divisive. Divisiveness is an attitude of superiority and shunning or distancing, I think, not simple recognition of difference.