david hopkins shares his frustrations with postmodern christianism here
Spiritual experiences are rooted in a holy fascination. It’s become difficult for me to be fascinated by the words, the music, the decorations, the games of a church service. Yes, that “rock’n’roll” church music bugs me too. With a few sacred exceptions, much of it comes across as juvenile sentimentalism, embarrassingly co-dependent and self centered…
Would you allow me a little critique of Postmodernism? For a devastating analysis and critique of Pomo read ‘The Death of Truth’, Dennis McCallum, Bethany House Publishers. 1996
Pomo is a bankrupt, latently Fascist (yet borrowing from dialectical Marxist theory), logically incoherent, hypocritical meta-narrative.
It claims there is no Truth while arrogantly posturing as the Truth
It uses reasoned argument to say reason and words are insufficient to communicate
It over-exaggerates the impact of culture on thought whilst claiming an immaculate conception (it itself claims to be immune to its own critique, cf Marxism)
It is the product of cynical, sceptical academics brought up in a secular humanist tradition
It claims there is no universal Moral Law yet responds with (justifiable) righteous indignation to Auschwitz, Ethnic cleansing, African female clitorectomy, Papuan head-hunting, Racism….
Yet at the same time it inconsistently says one culture mustn’t even begin to judge another
It demands tolerance yet is intolerant of rival metanarrative claims ie orthodox Christian
It shouts ‘conspiracy theory’ every time any minority is hard done by (except orthodox christian minorities)
It caricatures modernism reductionistically and sets up a straw man to knock down
It is essentially eastern mystical in its theology when theological yet dresses itself up as impartial (cf. TM and Hinduism).
If not checked it will replace Hitler’s social determinism ‘Volkism’ nightmare (no individuality or personhood, no freedom, all subsumed under the interests of the Volk ie the powerful elite) with something equally totalitarian and pernicious.
fish i think critiquing postmodernism is a good thing to do of course. you’ve left the same comment on two blog posts – you don’t need to shout…
you mean to say you read all those blogs?????? Wow!
I read your musings on preaching, by the way and couldn’t disagree more. Did you really mean to imply ‘preaching is dead’ or words to that effect?
Yours with the micro turned down, fish.
Check out my critique of Newbigin’s book at http://www.xenos.org/essays/newbigin-emergent.htm