I spent Saturday and Sunday afternoons of the Forge Grassroots Festival based at the UCA Hub in Little Collins Street, Melbourne. Cheryl Lawrie (of [hold :: this space]) (right below), Sam Charlesworth (middle) and Blythe Toll (left below) worked with a team to transform a corporate car park into Holy Ground : : Holy City. I was there to talk with interested people about alternatives to standard models of worship - a conversation deeply enhanced by the environment in which we met.
The burning bush/sacred ground experience of Moses was juxtaposed with the glimpses of God’s redeeming, transforming, hope-giving presence in the cities. iPods hanging from the ceiling showed video clips of the Tianenmen Square protester, the monks protests in Burma, and the destruction of the Berlin Wall. Around the walls and ceilings were projected films and photographs of pedestrian traffic in Melbourne. This was an invitation to explore the small clues to life, including the nature of concrete, cigarette butts and shoes.
In the middle was a space surrounded by security tape, with the words “Do Not Enter”, alongside phrases connecting the sacred ground experience of Moses with our experience.
Out on the wall outside was a chalk outline of the cityscape, with the words “New Earth”, and the invitation to dream of a future life for the city.
Phil used to blog at Pyromaniac but found the pressure to produce so great that he closed the site in January 2006 and started a team blog, Pyromaniacs.
Encounter, the ABC Radio National program, this week explores the paradoxes of postmodernism in a post-September 11 world. Are irony and relativism sapping the moral strength of the West - with potentially dangerous consequences? Or is uncertainty fundamental to ethics, and to religious faith?
David Rutledge talks with guests James Franklin, associate professor, School of Mathematics, University of NSW, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, senior editor of Tikkun magazine, Carl Raschke, professor of Religious Studies, University of Denver, Colorado, and Mark Taylor, Cluett Professor of Humanities, Williams College, Massachussetts. Also featured are the voices of postgraduate students Gail Hastings, Pol McCann, Demelza Marlin, Chris Mayes, Annette Pierdziwol and Shane Waugh.
The program aired on Sunday 12 March at 7 am but will be repeated on Wednesday March 15, 7.10 pm and Thursday March 16 at 4 am. If you miss those, the program can be listened to online in Real Audio format. The full transcript is online at ABC Radio National.
Today I caught the last day of Brian McLaren’s appearances in Melbourne.
This morning and this afternoon were at Tabor College. Brian started the day by giving us a basic introduction to the three worlds we find co-existing and struggling with one another: premodernism, modernism and post modernism. It was helpful to reflect on the challenge the conservative Islamic nations and religious institutions see in the dominant modernist culture as seen in the United States. After lunch we explored the implications of moving into a post-colonial paradigm. He explored with us stories of Christian collusion in colonialism in Rwanda and in the United States. Our challenge is not to lay blame with previous generations, but to learn from their experience so that we can honestly and courageously work differently now.
This evening was hosted by Forge Missional Training Network at Retro Cafe in Brunswick St. Brian talked about the challenge of rethinking the heart of the gospel around the life and teaching of Jesus. What would happen if we stopped interpreting the ‘kingdom of God’ solely in terms of life after death and began to cooperate with God’s dream or economy right here on Earth?
It was good to see Forge mending the bridges that were damaged last year during the release of Don Carson’s book, “Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church’. Brian’s returning next year to speak at one of the Forge summits. It would be good to see if we can arrange a gathering in Queensland.
This morning a colleague and I presented a reading report on feminism and postmodernist approaches to doctrine. We were given the challenge of presenting the insights of Mary McClintock Fulkerson as outlined in her chapter in the Cambridge Guide to Postmodern Theology, edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer.
Mary’s an academic theologian based at Duke Divinity School, Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. She’s known for her 1994 book, “Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology” in which she explores the complexity of recent studies on the experiences of women. Of particular interest to me were her reflections on the differences between Presbyterian and Pentecostal women. Her next book, “Traces of Redemption: Theology for Worldly Church”, will focus on doctrine of the church in light of racial diversity and differently abled.” She’s a minister with the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Not only is Mary an academic. She’s also a partner in the establishment of Third Reconstruction Institutes in which academics and grass roots activists continue the work of the civil rights movement in the United States.
As a class we were looking for ways in which Mary’s work critiques the limitations of modernism.
At the beginning McClintock Fulkerson makes it very clear that feminist theology began and continues with a liberation hermeneutic. In many ways feminism has been its own form of postmodernism. She recognises that the ‘mainstream’ of feminism has been dominated by white Euro-American middle class women and has overlooked or attempted to assimilate the voices of those calling themselves womanist (African American) and Mujerista (Hispanic). And then of course the voices of Asian Americans, women in Africa and Asia, the voices of lesbian feminists. McClintock Fulkerson is clear that she speaks as a white middle class academic woman.
Mary chooses three themes from postmodernism that resonate with the liberation hermeneutic of recent feminist theology:
1. Instability of the subject.
2. The Unsayable
3. Liberative Implications
Mary points out that early feminism, in its critique of male-dominated society, often called for or attempted to describe a ‘unified natural woman subject’. Likewise the choice of sexism as the primary sin has flattened the differences and oppressions linked with racism, class exploitation and heterosexism.
Postmodernist feminist theologians have critiqued the capacity for anyone to categorise and describe the experience of women without reference to broader experiences. Foucault’s poststructural work reminds us that signifying does not refer to a fixed, external reality. The experiences of both women and men continue to be transformed by relational experience.
Finally Mary refers to the growing edge of feminist theology as it engages with a vision of liberation that goes beyond gender and explores economic and political transformation.
This afternoon I listened to Martin Robinson’s presentation on revival at the recent Generous Orthodoxy conference. I downloaded the podcast from Conversatio Fide. It’s a 29 mb file that has a bit of airconditioning hum in it - but I managed to hear everything Martin says.
Martin challenges the hope held out by many speakers that if we pray we’ll cross a threshold and that evangelism and discipleship will be much easier. He unpacks the ‘revival myth’ by looking at the impact (or lack of impact) of the 18th Century revival in Britain. He points out that the diaries of Wesley indicate a continual struggle to connect with the people of Britain. In terms of numbers the Wesleyan revival was actually quite small. Christian leaders in England continued to struggle with declining church attendance and anational lawmakers that paid little attention to matters of faith or morality. The reality faced by people in the middle of a revival was continued hard slog.
The architecture of a revival (as outlined by Martin):
1. Weird and wonderful behaviour - as in Toronto Blessing. I thought of the review of revivals written up in John White’s book, “When the Spirit Came in Power“.
2. The development of new denominations designed to cater for the new fervour and behaviour.
3. The impact of fervour on mainstream churches and leaders.
4. The development of partnership between churches as they engage in community transformation.
Martin finishes his presentation with two alternative scenarios for the year 2050:
1. Christians have continued to become so separated from the world that they have become something of the past that people want to leave behind, along the lines of Zoroastrianism.
2. Christians have engaged in their communities as ‘future makers’ in ways that have inspired others to follow suit.
The presentation continued with dialogue with members of the conference.
Martin was born in India of missionary parents. His father became a church planter, initially in Scotland and then later in England. Martin trained for the ministry in his late teens and early twenties, with the Associated Churches of Christ, I believe. His first church was in inner city Birmingham. That congregation helped to plant a number of congregations and Martin became the minister of one of those church plants in suburban Birmingham. In 1987 he went to work for the Bible Society, initially as Church Growth Consultant and more recently as Director of Mission and Theology. Martin left the Bible Society in August 2002 to become the National Director for Together in Mission.
This last week the Generations in Conversation course took a look at Tony Jones’ book, Postmodern Youth Ministry, published by Youth Specialties and Zondervan, 2001.
Exploring cultural shift, cultivating authentic community and creating holistic connections. The first thing we noticed about the book was the layout. There’s more white space than most books - which gives the reader more scope for engaging with the text that’s there. We found ourselves engaging with bites, quotes and vignettes rather than attempting to read the chapter from start to end. There’s an element of randomness to the selection and placement of graphics. There’s a strong connection with the feel achieved by Douglas Coupland in his first edition of the novel, Generation X.
The second thing we noticed was the interactive nature of the book. Tony gave his manuscript to colleagues and included their responses in the end product.
So what’s Tony saying about postmodernity and postmodernism? He says that Gen-Xers are the cusp generation in relation to postmodern values. The Millennials however are studying in an environment with ‘full-blown, no-holds-barred postmodern thought”. He points to the postmodern ethos being displayed in the work of song writers, television and movie producers and advertising executives. That made a lot of sense when we considered the nature of the television advertising we’d been looking at. The Three “We Like Music” ads and the XBox 360 “Jump In” ads seemed to flow from a postmodern approach to narrative rather than linear product obsession.
Tony gives an ‘incomplete in-progress’ list of values of emerging postmodern culture versus the values of the modern/Enlightenment era:
1. Experiential rather than Rational
2. Spiritual rather than Scientific
3. Pluralistic rather than Unanimity
4. Relative rather than Exclusive
5. Altruistic rather than Egocentric
6. Communal rather than Individualistic
7. Creative rather than Functional
8. Environmental rather than Industrial
9. Global rather than Local
10. Holistic rather than Comparmentalized/Dichotomized
11. Authentic rather than Relevant
In response we wondered how much we were seeing a ‘versus factor’. It seemed to us that there was more a shift of focus and emphasis. For all the focus on ‘communal’ we were seeing as much individualism as ever in the ways that people made decisions about their futures. We could see evidence of global and local going alongside each other. Perhaps we needed to factor in the approach taken by Leonard Sweet in which he combined global and local to make glocal. What would the other ten look like if we did the same?
We liked Kara Powell’s thought:
“It would indeed be terrifying to worship a God we could figure out. The enigmas, mysteries, and antinomies of God are what make him God. Without these, he would be just a very cool guy.”
Hmm. We had to find a decent dictionary (online) to find out what antinomies meant. It refers to several laws or constants that are held together even though they may seem to contradict each other.
However we noted that many young people we were dealing with did not fit into the fascination with mysticism, acceptance of ambiguity and comfort with diversity associated with postmodernism. One workshop participant talked about the hunger for concrete approaches to God, life and everything. In another post I’ll explore the connection we made between James Fowler’s stages of faith work and the emergence of postmodern values.
Tony finishes by saying that ‘Relational’ remains as a constant. He writes that “there is new room in our faith for experience, for mysticism, and for mystery. We can recover the story as the great conveyer of truth, and we can use it to great effect just as Jesus did. We can welcome people into a journey instead of getting them to assent to an oversimplified version of the gospel and recite a three-sentence prayer.”
Just spent the weekend teaching the “Reframe” course at Margate in Redcliffe. With 15 members of three missional communities, we explored the ins and outs of developing church in the 21st century. We worked through the concept of being the body of Christ carrying out the mission of Jesus - proclaiming and embodying the kingdom of God.
We started Saturday morning looking at examples of world-changing creative innovators, using the Apple “Think Different” television commercial. See my post at Duncan’s TV Adland for the background. It got us thinking about what it was that made Jesus so distinctive. And what make his followers distinctive.
We talked about working as a missional community with a commitment at its core to being mutually accountable for living out the life God calls us to. Interestingly some people are resistant to the challenge of imitating Jesus. ‘There’s no way we can measure up to Jesus so why put the pressure on?” And the word ‘accountability’ is also scary. The Reformed theological response is to remind us that we are saved by grace alone, not by works. Though I would have thought that Paul the Apostle, along with Calvin, would have taught that we are saved for works. This is not just some preparation for life after death. Having Jesus as ’saviour’ is very much linked with having Jesus as ‘Lord’. After all, Jesus in his teaching talked about action and attitude than cognitive trust in his capacity to pay the price on the cross.
We missed out most of the material on postmodernism and post-Christendom. I figured that the groups I was working with had already worked out a new model of being that was responding to these paradigms. And there’s a limit to how much conceptual work you can do in a weekend without losing relevance to what’s happening the next day.
Over at PostKiwi’s Generations in Conversation I’ve reflected on Don Carson and Brian McLaren and their varying interpretation of the word ‘post’, as in ‘post modern’. I argue that ‘post’ does indeed refer to coming after in terms of time or space. But ‘post’ does not necessarily mean discontinuity. In some cases trends are accentuated rather than left behind. I like the phrase, “This, and more”. It’s what I live by. I am never ultimately defined by any category. I am liberal, and more. I work in literary culture, and more. I am modern, and more. I am Christian, and more.
At PostKiwi I’ve put in themes and variations I used at a multi-media conference two years ago. They’re for post apocalyptic, post bellum, post charismatic, post christendom, post classical, post coital, post colonial, post communion, post diem, post diluvial, post doctoral, post echo, post embryonic, post entry, post Evangelical, and post existence.
Here’s Post Liberal to Post Mortem. What do you think? What would you add to these definitions?
Post Liberal school of theology founded in the 1970s by Hans Frei and George Lindbeck, affirmed the decisive significance and the integrity of the biblical narrative.
Post Literary Communication no longer dominated by written text.
Post Lingual Post-lingual hearing impairment is a hearing impairment where hearing loss develops due to disease or trauma after the acquisition of speech and language, usually after the age of six.
Postliminous
Postliminium
The return of a person to his/her own country and privileges - especially a person who has been away in exile. (liminal refers to threshold).
Postlude
(Music) a final or concluding piece or movement2 a voluntary played at the end of a Church service. (As in ‘after game’.)
Postmenopausal of or occurring in the time following menopause.
Post Menstrual
of or occurring in the time following menstruation.
Post Meridian
after noon
in the afternoon or evening
Post Meridiem
ADVERB & ADJECTIVE:abbr. P.M. or p.m. or p.m. After noon. Used chiefly in the abbreviated form to specify the hour: 10:30 p.m.; a p.m. appointment.
ETYMOLOGY: Latin post mer diem : post, after + mer diem, accusative of mer di s, midday.
Post Millennialism
The doctrine that Jesus’s Second Coming will follow the millennium.
Post Mistress
After the Affair
Post-modernism of or relating to art, architecture, or literature that reacts against earlier modernist principles, as by reintroducing traditional or classical elements of style or by carrying modernist styles or practices to extremes.
Post Mortem
1 occurring after death
2 analysis or study of a recently completed event
Reading through Don Carson’s critique of the Emerging Church movement, I came across his concern about Brian McLaren’s interpretation of the prefix, “post”. McLaren interprets the prefix as meaning ‘flowing on from or coming after’, implying continuity as well as discontinuity. Carson says he doesn’t get it. “Post”, according to his dictionary, means ‘after in time, later,following’ as in postgraduate or postglacial, or after in space, behind, as in postaxial.
I believe McLaren’s interpretation is in tune with the dictionary definition. He’s taking a non-linear approach, allowing for the concept of emergence alongside abrupt switch of states. Moving beyond or past a phase or state does not necessarily mean being ‘anti’ that phase or state.
My argument is that ‘post’ can be used to describe ‘this and more’. For example I don’t fit inside the agreed perameters of ‘charismatic’ culture. Even though I value and have integrated spiritual gifts (a broad range) in my life, I wouldn’t easily fit in a charismatic church. It’s partly because of my engagement in critical engagement of Biblical texts and refusal to buy into the constant expectation of high power in worship. I now explore and express faith through a ‘post charismatic’ lense. I no longer fit inside the charismatic box, but I still value and retain much of the substance of what is in the box. The old categories and containers of meaning are no longer adequate. I am charismatic and much more.
At a conference a couple of years ago I explored the concept of ‘post’, giving participants the opportunity to add their subtleties to dictionary definitions. Here’s some of the definitions (Post A to Post E). Apologies for the exhaustive nature of the list!
Post Apocalyptic Science Fiction
Set in a world devastated by nuclear war or some other general disaster.
The time frame may be immediately after the catastrophe, focusing on the travails or psychology of survivors, or considerably later, often including the theme that the existence of pre-catastrophe civilization has been forgotten or mythologized.
Mad Max, Matrix, Animatrix, Waterworld. “Too close for comfort”. “Discovering that I still am…” “I am, Thou art”.
Post Bellum of or during the period after a war, esp. the American Civil War
[ETYMOLOGY: 19th Century: Latin post after + bellum war] “When families have to start talking and loving again”.
“The noise bellringers make when they realise they have rung the wrong bell”.
Post Charismatic Used to describe the experience of people who have ‘moved on’ from the charismatic movement. Also to describe subsequent ‘waves of the Holy Spirit’ as in the Vineyard movement. Enthusiasm tamed by reality.
Post Christendom
“Evangelism in a post-Christendom context is faced with the task not just of persuading people that Christianity is true but of even gaining a hearing for something widely regarded as passé.” Alan Roxburgh.
The physical kingdom is dead. Long live the King!
Recognising that there are other paradigms that we can hear and learn as well as teach. Christianity that serves that subverts rather than dominate.
The end of what is only the beginning. The end of assumed power over this throng! Truth the beginning of wisdom.
Post Classical Of, relating to, or being a time following a classical period, as in art or literature. “At the end of a controlled or highly structured era and at the birth of a dynamic pre-trend era.”
“We no longer know the rules”
“At the end of highly patterned, ritualized, perfected structured way of being.
Post-coital happening or existing after sexual intercourse “What’s your name?” “Now that is what I call a personal question why do you want to know?”
Post Colonial
Of, relating to, or being the time following the establishment of independence in a colony
(as in postcolonial economics) I actually like “The way we were” Barbara Streisand
Post Diem
after the appointed day Missed it by that much
Post Diluvial existing or occurring after the Flood
Post diluvian - a person or thing living after the Flood Can you have a ‘living thing’?
Post Doctoral
of, relating to, or engaged in academic study beyond the level of a doctoral degree “You wish, Duncan!”
Post Echo
A position of an echo send control after the main channel fader.
On layers played back before loud passages a magnetic tape gives a pre-echo, whereas on playback following the loud passage it gives a post-echo. Silence
Post Embryonic
following the embryonic stage of development Let’s break out! From gooeyness to gorgeous!
Post Entry Prison
Post Evangelical
Movement initiated by book of same name by Dave Tomlinson. A name for people who didn’t fit. In through the out door
Post Exilic
Of or relating to the period of Jewish history following the Babylonian captivity (after 586 b.c.) Return from the dog house. When you are finally allowed back after upsetting the Ladies Fellowship
Post Existence Do we believe in pre-existence? Getting closer every day!
Duncan Macleod posts on life, faith and culture in Australia, drawing from his involvement in the creative industry, the Uniting Church, the blogosphere, generational research, the emerging church and life on the Gold Coast.
Mary’s an academic theologian based at 
Martin challenges the hope held out by many speakers that if we pray we’ll cross a threshold and that evangelism and discipleship will be much easier. He unpacks the ‘revival myth’ by looking at the impact (or lack of impact) of the 18th Century revival in Britain. He points out that the diaries of Wesley indicate a continual struggle to connect with the people of Britain. In terms of numbers the Wesleyan revival was actually quite small. Christian leaders in England continued to struggle with declining church attendance and anational lawmakers that paid little attention to matters of faith or morality. The reality faced by people in the middle of a revival was continued hard slog.
“.
The first thing we noticed about the book was the layout. There’s more white space than most books - which gives the reader more scope for engaging with the text that’s there. We found ourselves engaging with bites, quotes and vignettes rather than attempting to read the chapter from start to end. There’s an element of randomness to the selection and placement of graphics. There’s a strong connection with the feel achieved by Douglas Coupland in his first edition of the novel, Generation X.
Tony’s blogging over at 
Just spent the weekend teaching the “Reframe” course at Margate in Redcliffe. With 15 members of three missional communities, we explored the ins and outs of developing church in the 21st century. We worked through the concept of being the body of Christ carrying out the mission of Jesus - proclaiming and embodying the kingdom of God.
