creating postmodernism (random ramblings)

Just thinking: So, one of the primary characteristics of emerging churches is that they engage postmodern culture (still wondering about this? see Emerging Churches and the ministry of the missional church). But is postmodern culture something that is running rampant? Out of control? Forced on us by some invisible force? Or by a visible one (Gen Y’s)?

Yah OK, sometimes it might seem like it’s running rampant. But I don’t think it is. And it’s created by people! Maybe by Gen Y’s, and maybe you don’t see them as people, but they are. And others who are not Gen Y’s are wholly postmodern as well. So, if postmodernism is created by people (not really intensionally obviously), and emerging engages postmodernism, can emerging churches also take part in creating postmodernism?

Undoubtedly, I’d say! For example. Within emerging conversations we like to say that postmodernism means moving beyond the individualism of modernist culture. But reality is that I don’t think this is what postmodernism is! This might be what we want it to be, and with good reason, since this would bring us closer to the heart of Jesus (I believe). Yes, wikipedia is a good example of moving beyond individualism, but look around the blogosphere, and you’ll find a lot of individualism. Look at how Afrikaner culture has changed, and how people lock themselves into their homes, not even knowing their neighbours, and pretty much doing life on their own… would seem like their is a good chance that postmodernism might actually consist more of some form of hyper-individualism (look at the relativistic elements in postmodernism to get some nice philosophical examples) than post-individualism.

So we would also have to create the postmodernism which we are talking about…

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