What is the Emerging Church? Postmodernity

What is the Emerging Church? Postmodernity is the second installment in a series by Scot McKnight on the Emerging Church. This post is an exceptionally lucid description of postmodernity related to the Emerging Church. Here are the opening paragraphs:

This series on “What is the Emerging Church?” is designed to help the many who are constantly asking about the identity and definition of the movement or conversation. But, let me be a bit cranky first: Emergent Village has a clear “Order” posted and there is no reason anyone can’t consult it for definition; Wikipedia has a definition, and it too can easily be consulted; and nearly every leader of the Emerging Movement has something along this line. So, let this be said: there is no reason for people to use simplistic caricatures of the movement.

The single-most debated issue concerns postmodernism.

But this word beggars definition, and I’ll do what I can to give the term and its implications some clarity.

First, it is commonly stated that postmodernity denies truth. What a minute! That, too, is a caricature useful only for apologetics designed to score points. The more reasonable meaning is this: postmodernity denies that meta-narratives are the truth. (A meta-narrative is a comprehensive explanation of reality — and I’ll side with Kevin Vanhoozer here that meta-narrative has a variety of meanings, one of which would include our Christian faith as a “meta-narrative.”)

And yet again wait another minute! As Professor Jamie Smith has clearly shown, postmodernity is more complex than that because its real denial is this: it denies the ability to prove meta-narratives on rational, independent, objective grounds. In other words, it contends that the only way meta-narratives can be finally persuasive is if one believes the meta-narrative itself. Faith is required for the meta-narrative to be truthful. For a scientific meta-narrative of life to be “true” requires that a person believe in the “scientific way of things.” For Jamie Smith, see his chapter in Christianity and the Postmodern Turn.

He goes on to address nine other points. It is one of the best concise descriptions I have read.

Comments

[will spotts]

Mike,
I agree with just about everything the writer says here.

I still find myself uncomfortable for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

Part of it is, of course, the community issue because I don't find them guarantors of finding or discerning truth or even of making progress in that direction.

Part of it is the use of words that are "fashionable" as many of these have flabby meanings. This is a side effect of post-modernism, but it is frustrating to me.

The other discomfort I have is with the nature of truth. Yes, I recognize we're not talking about hard postmodernist anti-epistemology. Still, the general understanding conlficts with the way I seem to be wired to process information. I see relationships between dissimlar things, but I am also something of a mismatcher -- I tend to describe things in terms of what they are not. I concur that the objective truth of a claim is generally impossilbe to prove -- almost always requiring a leap of faith. But I find a falsehood is often much easier to prove.

If a "proposition" (which, as McKnight observes, are present even in narrative) contradicts itself or claims to be something it is not, it can generally be rejected as false. In the emergent conversation I often get the impression that identifying what is not true is verboten -- or at least regarded as impossible. Such a stance renders me incapable of any thought.

[Michael Kruse]

Will, I will be interested to see what McKnight says in his coming posts. I think his next one is about the positvies, which I assume means there is one coming about the negatives.

One of my concerns is what I see as trend (not all pervasive) to link Emergent with leftist (political not theological) agendas. That is not because I want them to be rightest. I just have the sense that some of the conversation is more about showing how "non-Evangelcial political right I am" rather than be discerning how to link good intentions and sound theology with sound public policy.

[will spotts]

I've also noticed this recent development.

I'm overly biased against the political that is not essentially biblical.

An example I might offer is that the Bible has little to say about government re-distribution programs -- though it has a great deal to say about the poor and justice.

I found the comparisons of wealth versus giving (at least as indicated by tax returns) to be very enlightening in that regard. Many of the most visibly Evangelical areas tended to be very generous in personal contributions -- while they often at the same time opposed many government programs sold as helpful to the poor.