Postmodernism-Postsecularism: a cursory report

Initial notes (I'm just beginning to understand this, I think):

Modernism or modernity was premised on the pretense of objective knowledge. Part of modernism's fuel was the scientific method and the quest for certainties about the natural world.

This placed religious narratives and myths outside the realm of fact, and fact became more important than value.

However, as postmodernism and postsecularism would insist, there is no purely objective reason or objective rationality within human beings.

We might be able to gather accurate data, but inevitably, that data is interpreted within a web of beliefs and values.

A big-picture story underlies every point of view.

Therefore, while the likes of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins in the modernist camp have been able to say, in so many words, "We do not have enough objective knowledge to say that religious story is historically factual," the likes of John Milbank and others in postmodern and postsecular camp have been able to say, "We do not have enough objective knowledge to say that religious story is a myth."

This is more than merely turning the tables on modernity. It's a realization that beliefs and values cannot be trumped by facts, because facts are always understood within the context of beliefs and values.

While we function with some sense of foundational knowledge by which we make other decisions and judgments about the world around us, at some point, foundational knowledge is taken on faith.

If there is a foundational point of view within some of the theological postsecularists, it would be that there is a God who has all the objective knowledge, and we don't have it.


Clarifications? Better explanations? Denunciations? Additions? Please comment.

My sources for the above comments include this article:

"God's Own Knowledge," by J. Sharlet in Killing the Buddha

And these books:

The ambitious holiday reading list

Reading:

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing, by Richard Hugo

Shopgirl, by Steve Martin

Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, by Daniel L. Migliore

Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition: Creation, Covenant, and Participation, James K.A. Smith and James H. Olthuis, editors

Macbeth, by Shakespeare

Critical Theory: A User-Friendly Guide, by Lois Tyson

Reading the Written Image: Verbal Play, Interpretation, and the Roots of Iconophobia, by Christopher Collins

Finishing or Continuing:

The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1, Lee Gutkind, editor

The Optimist: Poems, by Joshua Mehigan

The Last Battle, by C.S. Lewis, which I've been reading with the kids

Tree of Heaven: Poems, by Jim McKean, who was my thesis adviser

Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy, by Dave Hickey

A Stay Against Confusion: Essays on Faith and Fiction, by Ron Hansen

Examining:

Imaginative Writing, by Janet Burroway

Pentecostalism and the evaluation of personal experience

In the current edition of Books & Culture, Arlene M. Sanchez Walsh reflects on an afternoon tour she took of Angelus Temple, where the late Pentecostal hero Aimee Semple McPherson ministered. Sanchez, herself a licensed minister in the Pentecostal denomination called International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, writes that "the Pentecostal cult of personality tells us more about who Pentecostals are than it does about the leaders they hold in such high esteem."

The personality cults abound in Pentecostal and charismatic versions of Christianity. Right now, in Lakeland, Fla., some of my friends and family members are visiting an "outpouring" that is being presided-over by one of the latest personalities to gather a cult following: Todd Bentley, who can be seen on numerous YouTube videos leading crowds into near-hysterical frenzies.

The problem, these days, in our mass culture, is that charismatic personalities (using charismatic in the broadest sense of the term) and intense experiences are considered indications of reality or truth or God's presence. No one seems to think that senses and perceptions could be manipulated -- wittingly or unwittingly -- by a leader or by a crowd, in politics as well as religion.

"When a leader has the quality of charisma, he is able to arouse an extraordinary level of trust and devotion from his followers," wrote Wendy Duncan in her book I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult. "The charismatic leader attracts people to his ideas and causes them to desire to be in his presence."

What follows that initial devotion, though, is a movement from one personality to the next, from one "move of God" to the next, from one "outpouring" to the next, from one "revival" to the next. Len Oakes, in his book Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse University Press, 1997), wrote, "The followers surrender not to the person of the leader but to the power manifest in him, and they will desert him if his power fails. The followers attain freedom from routine and the commonplace by surrendering to the leader and -- through him -- to their own emotional depths."

Following Oakes, it seems to me, based on my own 20 growing-up years in neo-Pentecostal/charismatic churches, that the promise of a new personality, as well as the alleged new move of God that comes with him, is never delivered and eventually fades away, so one is always eagerly looking for that next fix, whether it is a fix that will finally bring healing or guidance, or a fix that will bring a new experience of "emotional depths."

Consider again Oakes' phrase "freedom from routine and the commonplace." It is interesting that a common accusation against institutional churches is that their rituals and their orderliness smack of spiritual deadness. To be sure, as Jaroslav Pelikan said, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." But what are the accusers of institutional churches seeking from the charismatic leader and the latest outpouring, the latest revival? Not truth. Instead, they seek experiences. The accusers of institutional churches never seem to consider that rituals and orderliness might be structured in such a way so that truth could be handed down to generation after generation.

But if a guy has been brought up with television and rock 'n' roll, how is he going to see the value in quietness and orderliness and the repetition of old texts unless he has the help of a little teaching or training? He wants sensation. Sensations dictate to him whether or not truth is being communicated. If the sensations come with Jesus' name attached, then they must be from God, never mind all affronts to historical doctrine and theology, never mind the atmosphere created by music and the mantra-like repetition of phrases.

Perhaps he should consider that church and worship are not about his personal experiences.

The fact that he does not consider such thoughts is evidence enough that Sanchez was right: "the Pentecostal cult of personality tells us more about who Pentecostals are than it does about the leaders they hold in such high esteem." All they want, as Oakes said, is "freedom from routine and the commonplace" and the resulting experience of "emotional depths."

-Colin Foote Burch

Evangelicals don't know much about theology

Michael Lindsay, a sociologist at Rice University, recently told the 2007 Religion Newswriters Assocition Annual Conference about his study of evangelicals. Lindsay has interviewed evangelicals across the United States and written a book, Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite (Oxford, 2007).

While Lindsay's work has done a lot to bust media stereotypes of evangelicals, one thing he told the RNA conference is sadly not surprising: Evangelicals don't know much about theological teachings; they have very little formal theological education.

This recalls the famous statement by the evangelist Billy Sunday: "Theology? I didn't know I had any."

However, some of Lindsay's other findings are more flattering of evangelicals:

MYTH: Evangelicals derive their power mainly in the political field.
REALITY: Most identify themselves with culture and the arts (especially Hollywood), where they feel they can make a greater difference.

MYTH: Evangelicals are mainly in white suburban communities in between the U.S. coasts.
REALITY: One of the largest evangelical churches is a Hispanic congregation in Houston. Another, in New York, serves Ivy League professionals.

MYTH: Domestic issues like gay marriage and abortion are most important to evangelicals.
REALITY: Evangelical groups are more involved on the global front, with issues like HIV/AIDS and hunger.

Read more of RNA's summary of Lindsay's presentation at http://www.rna.org/action071102.php#evangelical.

A Thought About God

"God does not cease to be a mystery in the event of revelation. The self-revealing God never becoms a controllable object or a manipulable possession."
From Daniel Migliore's Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology