Starting Phase 2

I returned from Washington State last night after a great three-week experience up there. What a weekend, however! My father had a heart attack and spent my last day there (Sunday) in ICU. Things are looking more promising for him today. That's good news!!! Needless to say, it's been a bit difficult for me to focus. I did, however, start my foray into Stanley Grenz's book "A Primer on Postmodernism". I have enjoyed it a great deal. The way I see it, the emergent movement is a subset (if postmodernism even has subsets) of the postmodernist movement. Let me tell you why I say that. There are some obvious parallels between postmodernism and the emergent movement. Both, for instance, are suspicious of using reason as the sole source of authority (both believe one should consider the context reason is used, and both would balance reason with intuition and emotion). Both see the importance of community over and above the individual. This is a drastic departure from modernists. Both also acknowledge the existence of more than one perspective or worldview. There are some ways, however, in which the movements seem different than one another. Postmodernism as a whole seems to take a more pessimistic view of things than the emergent movement. The emergent movement seems a bit more geared toward one generational demographic (i.e. predominantly white, middle class twenty-somethings) than postmodernism which isn't primarily generationally defined. It would seem, though, that the two movements share more similarities than differences. I can see why both movements are perceived of as a threat by more fundamentalist pockets of the Christian community since each movement seems comfortable with the notions of relativism and pluralism - concepts many fundamentalists would reject outright. What I've most appreciated in Grenz's book thusfar (I've only made it through his first two chapters) is that Grenz puts the movements within broader cultural parameters. He talks about postmodernism and its impact on art, music, architecture, film, television, and many other realms. His broadbased discussion of postmodernism has already given me several ideas about how to adapt worship to meet the needs of postmodernists. I'll share some of these with you in coming days as I move through the rest of Grenz's book. Til next time...