This has been making the rounds a lot in the blogosphere…read the full response from Brian McLaren here.
Chuch Colson wrote an article about the demise postmodernism that has ruffled many em-chuch feathers. He references Barna’s recent “everyone is dumb except me” poll to support his claim that the church is missing the boat:
Christianity offers a belief system that is, as Paul tells Festus, “true and reasonable.” I can’t think of a more critical time for pastors, scholars, and laypeople to be grounded in a biblical worldview and to defend it clearly to those hungering for truth.But are we prepared for such a challenge? George Barna recently completed a tour of American churches and came back with a dismaying report that most church and lay leaders-90 percent, according to one survey-have no understanding of worldview. How are we going to contend with competing philosophies if we’re not even rooted in our own truth system?
Ironically, just as there seem to be encouraging signs in the culture, there are also signs that the church is dumbing down, moving from a Word-driven message to an image- and emotion-driven message (note how many Christian radio stations have recently converted from talk and preaching to all music).
It would be the supreme irony-and a terrible tragedy-if we found ourselves slipping into postmodernity just when the broader culture has figured out it’s a dead end.
For starters, the “90%” figure is really the percentage that don’t agree with or fit Barna’s definition of a “Christian Worldview,” so I’m not exactly going to rush out and buy a textbook from Mr. Colson anytime soon if he can’t even read the report he’s referencing. But McLaren gives him well more than the time of day, so I thought I’d take a look.
EDIT: I had the entire response posted here, but Brian has since upgraded his site and posted it in html. Read it there; he doesn’t have comments, though, so you can comment here.
I’m afraid both Mr. Colson and Mr. McLaren are mistaken.
Mr. Colson is wrong for assuming all postmodernism is of the virulent, truth-denying kind.
Mr. McLaren is wrong for assuming such a positive role about the postmodern mode.
Mr. McLaren, I think, has ably shown were Mr. Colson is wrong. But, as is so often true of us all, Mr. McLaren is blind to his own prejudices.
Note, for example, how much of Mr. McLaren’s criticism revolves around consideration of politics and power systems. This is not completely invalid, of course, but it’s interesting in that if there is any thing that’s something like a unifier of postmodern modalities, it’s that orientation around politics (and of course I here mean politics in the much broader sense than the popular connotations give it).
But it seems to me that the motif couching discussions of the Faith in political terms (as comes out again and again in Mr. McLaren’s comments), is that Mr. McLaren (perhaps unwittingly) has recourse to the very thing he criticizes: power and domination. I would think he is a reader of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, and so I assume this irony would not be lost on him.
A response like this cannot do much of a detailed commentary on such a lengthy piece, so this one touchstone will have to do. But I do want to insert a disclaimer: I am much more sympathetic to postmodern modes of thinking than I am to their predecessor, but I am less than sanguine about the modern evangelical embrace of it–even in missional terms. Such an embrace in the liberal mainline churches have given us the untethered and unaccountable actions of the Episcopal Church. What will emerge among evangelicals when their embrace of postmodernism turns to into an embrace from which they can no longer extricate themselves?
clash of cultures
the clash of the titans is well underway online, Chuck Colson in one corner [re: the demise of postmodernistic relativism], and Brian McLaren in the other (in PDF format) [re: the emerging church's missionally engaging the prevailing culture].. or, rea…
I don’t think that’s what’s going on, Clifton. Brian is simply responding to Colson radical misunderstanding of the very nature of post-modernism.
I believe that that - and that alone - is the reason that his criticism revolves around consideration of politics and power systems. (I have never heard McLaren - privately or publicly - *push* this line.) These things are fundamental to the secular philosophy of post-modernism and as such if Colson does not even see that then it is further evidence of his worrying mis-reading.
Even in that article, McLaren is not unreservedly positive about postmodernism.
I’m glad to see others are talking about this “debate.” I am concerned that McLaren has decided to end the dialogue for the time being. I have e-mailed him and posted about it on my blog.