Postmodernism has become a four-letter word among many evangelicals. It has been blamed for every malaise of contemporary society and vilified as the greatest threat to contemporary Christian faith. In The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity
, Carl Raschke acquaints readers with what postmodernism really is, and more importantly, what it is not. He argues that evangelical Christianity has allied itself with non-Christian philosophies, including rationalism and evidentialism, and suggests that breaking this alliance and embracing postmodernism may allow evangelical Christianity to flourish once again as a progressive rather than reactionary force in the present-day world.
Raschke begins with a detailed analysis of the current state of postmodernism and evangelical thought. He provides a background to the controversy, revealing what the term has meant in different contexts and how it relates to contemporary evangelicalism. He describes the development of postmodernism, explores the writings of early postmodernist thinkers, and examines how postmodernist thought has influenced contemporary theology from Derridian deconstruction to Radical Orthodoxy. More
During my DMin program we read The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church
and here is one of my comments during the discussion of it:
Frost and Hirsch think of the church as incarnational, not attractional. As an incarnational church, it’s main purpose is to “come into the neighborhood” and minister for the sake of the world rather than created a “sacred place” where believers gather to encounter the good news of Jesus.
When I read the following on page 15 “Christendom is not the biblical mode of the church. It was/is merely one way in which the church has conceived of itself.” I thought of the following questions.
- How many of the churches represented in this cohort are more aligned to Christendom (as these authors, and other authors as well, define the concept) than missional?
- How many of the churches represented in this cohort who might be aligned to Christendom think they can be missional in a Christendom skirt? How?
- What do you think “revolution” means to the authors?
- How many buy into the author’s concept of revolution over reorganization?
