Post-Evangelicalism...? - Part 3 of 3

The Post-Evangelical
(Dave Tomlinson)

06 - "Let Me Tell You a Story"

There are times when the "evangelical" part of being post-evangelical still lingers. For Dave, this may be one of those places. The word "crumbling" suggests foundationalist imagery (i.e., a house built on the sand). It might be helpful for post-evangelicals to keep in mind that the modern understanding of truth - that it's constructed like ahouse on a rock - is imagery not worth using in a non-foundationalist age. Perhaps we would be more useful if we understood the world as transitioning, growing, becoming - not cracking and crumbling. Not only is it more endearing, it might be more accurate. - Doug Pagitt

It's where books are giving way to screens. People are hungry for spirituality, but dismissive of systematized religion. In the postmodern world image and reality are so deeply intertwined that drawing a line between the two is difficult.

What an incredibly exciting time to be alive as a disciple of Christ. The church has been pushed to the fringes of our culture and stripped of many of the props it has depended on for viability. Some view the move to the fringes as the end of the Constantinian worldview, where the church props up the culture to legitimize itself. Not being at the center of things has been cause for great consternation and upheaval within American evangelicalism. But while life on the fringes is scary, it's part of the church's heritage. Consider Israel's exile in Babylon, or the church before Constantine, during its first three centuries. - Timothy Keel

Few metaphors, in fact, sum up the postmodern situation better than virtual reality, for it is a world in which the old certainties are dissolving.

My thesis is quite simple. Culturally, post-evangelicals identify more closely with postmodernity than modernity and this has a significant bearing on the way they approach and understand the Christian faith. One of the greatest challenges facing post-evangelicals is critiquing, and making a unique Christian contribution, to the new world they inhabit.

In their book Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World, Paul Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson identify three demographic groups in America: the Modern, Traditional, and Cultural Creatives. Cultural Creatives, largely resistant to middle-class values, nevertheless define themselves by virtue of their own unique values. On their Web site, Ray and Anderson ask, "Does the religious right have a hammerlock on values in America?" They think not and go on to enumerate values that resonate with postmoderns and post-evangelicals. When evangelicals write off such people as New Agers, they're making a significant mistake. - Timothy Keel

The issue isn't simply who we're trying to reach but who are we. - Doug Pagitt

A World of Different Stories
Modernity not only tells us how things are, but how they were and how they should be.

Post-evangelicals seem to believe their claims are modest, but they really are sweeping. ... They say, "There is no universal, objective truth," but they have their own version of universal truth - one that posits there is no objective, universal truth. - Mark Galli

Actually I think most people would settle for a good story. Part of the rub with post-evangelicals is that most evangelicals rely on apologetics to explain their faith. But apologetics can't satisfy the postmodern appetite for mystery, paradox, and imagination. People are desperate for myth, art, and story. - Timothy Keel

...in the postmodernist world:

• people turn away from big stories to more modest "episodes." In other words, they are suspicious of large-scale explanations and universal moralities. Truth is whatever you find out for yourself, not a metanarrative someone else imposes on you.
• people distrust claims of certainty and objectivity; the world is a much more blatantly subjective place.
• we enter an age of pluralism and relativism. The unforgivable sin is to behave as though you have cornered the market on truth. The tendency is to "mix and match" stories from different sources and versions of truth, drawing on things new and old.
• the search for spirituality doesn't lead to conventional religion because religious metanarratives are no more appealing to them than modernist metanarratives.

Zygmunt Bauman describes this postmodern world as "modernity without illusions." In other words, its claims are much more modest than modernity's; it no longer says, "Here is the truth - believe it!" It says, "Try this on for size."

The beauty of what Dave is expressing plays its way out in many wonderful Christian communities. What he's suggesting is not a "take it only if you like it" attitude, but rather a "come and experience the story of God in the life of this community" invitation. IT has been my experience in our community that the reality of God becomes something more than affirming mental assent to belief and is instead something to be lived. But lived modestly. The hope of the post-evangelical position is that it allows communities to be honest and accessible. Many of us from evangelical backgrounds know the sickening feeling of over-promised Christianity. The hope in the PE posture is that it promises what can be experienced, and for many postmoderns that is plenty. The call to live rightly in the world is much more attractive for postmoderns than the call to simply "believe right." - Doug Pagitt

...evangelicals are lodged in a cultural time-warp, still interpreting their faith using the language of, and in the shadow of, the modernist "big story."

There are no culturally free people, and there is no culturally free Christianity. ... We need to be ever vigilant to not carry the seedlings of the "we will be able to get it right" attitude that seems to be planted in this comment. - Doug Pagitt

...all claims to reality are under negotiation, and theology can no longer make absolute claims in a vacuum and expect a ready acceptance.

The Dawning of the New Age
The dark side of postmodernism is very dark. Bauman says it's marked by an "all-deriding, all-eroding, all-dissolving destructiveness." Its ability to deconstruct all the old certainties plunges us into a sea of confusion in which nothing is quite clear anymore.

For many post-evangelical communities, mystery is not the enemy to be concurred nor a problem to be solved, but rather, the partner with whom we dance - and dance we must. The call for the post-evangelical community is to dance and play the music. But we are also called to show each other the way into mystery. We would certainly be under providing if we didn't offer new ways to enter and live in mystery. - Doug Pagitt

Modernity exalted the cognitive faculties and worshiped whatever could be mechanized. The sciences flourished in modernity. Perhaps post-modernity will reqcquaint us with the "humanities" - the celebration of the organic, poetic, imaginative, and tragic. There is no limiting the power of the gospel, but I do believe it's better suited to dancing with the humanities than being dissected by the sciences. - Timothy Keel

[I like the repetition of the word "dance" - I have seen so much of dancing!]

Soon the post-evangelical pastor will become poet (one who can put people's experiences into words), interpreter (one who can put people's lives into a greater context), and guide (one who can invite people into a communal journey). - Doug Pagitt

...postmoderns are actually more open to the spiritual realities and possibilities Christians profess. But Christians shouldn't pormote their spiritual reality in absolutist terms. If we wish to take part in negotiating the future of our culture, we shouldn't act like privileged insiders who know the truth with certainty or allow ourselves to become "trivialized outsiders."

[I may use language gleaned from the New Age movement, but that doesn't mean I want my faith, my Christianity, to be too much like it.]

There are many of us in the post-evangelical camp who are quite concerned thatour communities don't simply become the hyper-individualized expressions of faith that marked much of the modern New Age movement. Post-evangelical Christianity might have much to learn from th eNew Age effort, but it should not be seen as the model. - Doug Pagitt

Postmodernity requires of us nothing less than "the deep interrogation of every breathing aspect of lived experience."

The issue need not be framed in one thing leaving and another coming. This issue is better understood as multiple worldviews existing simultaneously. We need not return to the attitude that in order for one way of thinking to be valuable, the previous one needs to fail or end. - Doug Pagitt
[DUALITY]

Pieces of the Truth
[Post-evangelicalism as Tinker Toys? Christianity as LEGO.]
"Our responsibility," says Brueggeman, "is not a grand scheme or a coherent system, but the voicing of a lot of little pieces out of which people can put life together in fresh configurations."

If Dave is correct, and I suspect he is, this will mean the end of the "mission statement, purpose driven" approach to community leadership. There won't be the acceptance of a single focus of a community of faith, no matter how snappy and easy it is to remember. - Doug Pagitt

We must make available "lots of disordered pieces that admit more than one large ordering." This mirrors something Paul wrote the Galatians. Paul exhorted the Galatians not to fall for rigid legalism, but to stick with freedom in Christ, instead. The essential "pieces" the Galatians had to work with included the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5.22-23). They were to avoid mixing in "works of the flesh" (5.19-21). But otherwise their lives in Christ could be formed in a million configurations informed not only by their freedom in Christ, but also their God-given human potential and imagination.

As the German ecologist Rudolph Bahro says, "When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure."

For those of us who chose the moniker of post-evangelical must be reminded that our way is not any more like Jesus than those who went before us. We are simply making an effort to be like Jesus in our setting. May God grant us the blessing of our forefathers. - Doug Pagitt

07 - The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Something Quite Like the Truth
...research of any sort takes place within a paradigm, a whole cluster of beliefs and values that are taken for granted within a given community...

It is this understanding that has reassured many post-evangelicals that the creation of transformative communities - not churches that focus on education and indoctrination - is where we ought to place our emphasis. Now we must struggle with "How do we then live?" The kind of conversation Dave is suggesting here requires a changing of the very approaches we are using. So, how do we do it? - Doug Pagitt

Because paradigms are imperfect human constructions, and because no paradigm allows humans to see everything as it really is, paradigms are ill equipped to handle every anomaly or inconsistency. When too many anomalies rise, the community using the paradigm begins questioning its value, and the paradigm goes into crisis - with three possible outcomes. First, once tackled, the anomalies may be resolved satisfactorily from within the paradigm. Second, the anomalies may not be solved, but since no alternative paradigm emerges that can do any better, the problems are simply put on the back burner; or third, the adoption of a new paradigm either resolves the anomalies or makes them irrelevant. Often, the pressure of having too many issues on the back burner speeds the search for, and adoption of, a new paradigm.

...shifts to a new paradigm don't take place through straightforward logical development, but rather through inspired and imaginative leaps.

It's important to note that the answer to this condition is not simply to change the "card" (the music or preaching style), but the change must come from the understanding of reality. For post-evangelicals it's not simply an issue of changing the packaging or method but the very understanding of the reality of God. This is why the creation of Christian communities is so important in the post-evanelical world. - Doug Pagitt

"It's Not What You Know - It's the Way You Know It"
Post-evangelicals have moved away from the certainty that characterizes evangelicalism to a more provisional and symbolic understanding of truth.

I wonder if post-evangelicals are willing to concede that not everyone is called to wallow in the ambiguities of provisional truth. Evangelicals hold some truths with deep certainty and believe this certainty - faith - may even be a gift of God. Post-evangelicals may lack certainty as a divine reminder that the kingdom of heaven has not yet arrived and that our lives and theology are provisional until Christ comes again. But we need evangelicals to speak God's truth confidently in order to buoy up many people who would otherwise lead listless lives. - Mark Galli

Humans have a number of ways of knowing, and often these intuitive, relational paths inform how we exercise our will.
Must postmoderns be converted to modern notions of truth in order to become disciples of Jesus Christ? Hopefully not. - Timothy Keel

The difference between the two paradigms isn't their opinions about what's true as much as a difference in the way opinions about truth are reached. Another difference between the two paradigms is their different language preferences: scientific or poetic.
[process]

These issues have more to do with the posture of the belief holder than they do with the belief itself. The belief holder needs to be provisional, imprecise, and symbolic as in, "it seems to me" and "from my vantage point..." Much post-evangelical critique deals not only with content, but also with the attitude of the person using the content. The place of greatest distinctive in evangelicals and post-evangelicals may not be in what they believe (even as significant as that can be at times), but in how they believe it and how they organize themselves to get others to believe it. - Doug Pagitt

Scientific language aims to eliminate ambiguities by using precise and absolute statements. Poetic language delights in ambiguity and even plays with it, deliberately.

Post-evangelicals will admit to using propositional statements, but they seem to have a hard time admitting how utterly dependent they are on such reasoning. - Mark Galli

[It's the problem with post modern/relativistic thinking: "Be open to everything, except people who are closed-minded."]

The call of the post-evangelical is to do the work of the reformers and not to simply think like the reformers and recite them. Perhaps our need to study the past isn't for content but for clues on how to proceed and inspiration to continue on the journey. - Doug Pagitt

Rather than take their faith for granted, questioners are honestly struggling for a faith they can believe in.

"Anybody There?"

Speech events are constitutive acts performed within the context of plausibility structures. Everything we say and hear shapes our perceptions of reality, a reality that exists within the framework of a community of people who share our outlook. Just as the university community, for example, has a plausibility structure that promotes a certain way of knowing and talking, so should the church. Unfortunately the church has struggled to find an equally compelling way to pass on faith. - Timothy Keel

How do we gain access to the truth? By God's revelation of himself, which comes to us via the words of Scripture. These words do not reveal the complete, exhaustive truth about God, but they do reveal sufficient truth for us to know God truly and do his will faithfully. These words reveal enough for us to live lives of certainty, joy, and fruitfulness for God. To desire more than this is to transgress the limits of our humanity. - Mark Galli
[Is there more? Is it even possible to want/have more?]

The God Who Is There

What lost or neglected metaphors can churches rediscover or reimagine that will help it reach out to postmoderns? Church as monastic community? Mission outpost? Artistic haven? Our metaphors will either free up or constrict how we conceive of ourselves; they will determine what we measure and value. - Timothy Keel

Karl Barth actually insisted that the only way we can speak of God is in a via dialectica or through an opposition of statement and counter-statement, of "yes" and "no," of paradox, in which the extremes of the negative and positive ways are held together in the response of faith.
[duality]

...God is beyond rational comprehension and, ultimately, dogmatic formulation.

...poetic language is "more true" and more meaningful than "precise" or unambiguous scientific language that doesn't allow for metaphoric tension.

• It's impossible to escape the constraints of language and objectively to say whether our beliefs are true or not. Whatever your choice, faith is required.
• Human language is unable to describe the external realities of God with any precision. As we have seen, this does not make language useless; it simply means that we have to accept its limitations.
• Religious language, or talk about God and the spiritual realm, is therefore inherently provisional and approximate.

Critical Realism Trumps the Naive
Since Christians assume God is a real external being there are two roads they can travel down: that of naive realism or that of critical realism. Naive realism assumes that talking about God or the spiritual dimension in a literal or near-literal way is as unproblematic as our talk about everyday objects and experiences.

Naive realism assumes that all expressions of truth must be precise, absolute, literal, and propositional.

...rejecting naive realism doesn't mean one believes the Bible is devoid of historical content.

...critical realism affirms that many entities, though unobservable, are nevertheless real...

The Symbolism of the Cross

"Generation X" is the first generation to grow up in a post-Christian, postmodern America. Some sociologists also believe that Generation X is the most poorly parented generation of this century. Generation X knows upheaval and feels afloat. Generatio X wants to reconnect to what has been lost or sacrificed in their lives. The relational (versus legal) conception of the atonement speaks to Generation X with warm, life-giving, fopeful language. - Timothy Keel

But we simply can't dodge biblical language that says something objective changed in the universe when Christ died, that sins formerly unforgiven can now be forgiven, that the chains of sin and death have been broken. These biblical metaphors consistently point to something that took place outside the human heart, even though it ends up transforming the human heart. - Mark Galli

"So, It's Just a Matter of Anything Goes?"

Many in our community hold to the notion that the word truth needs very little help - and certainly doesn't need qualifiers like objective or absolute. How can truth be more than true? - Doug Pagitt

At this point we only have perspectives on ultimate truth and not ultimate truth itself.

Those unfamiliar with post-evangelical communities of faith shouldn't conclude that these are people of little passion or belief. They may be better described as a people who are captured by the story of God, not a people who have captured the truth of God. - Doug Pagitt

When people assume you're floating free if you don't have absolute truth, they are making one very serious value judgment: that you are not seeking absolute truth.

• A combination of faith and doubt.
  [duality]

Doubt challenges dogmatism and questions the neat schemes in which we think we have truth wrapped up.

..."holy insecurity."

...faith is always a trust and commitment despite the lack of infalilble dogmas. Faith takes us beyond a detached scientific outlook to the sphere of personal involvement.

• A combination of commitment and enquiry.
  [duality]
  

Commitment does not rule out critical reflection, continued enquiry, or dedication to the search for truth beyond personal preference.

• A combination of confession and self-criticism.
  [duality]

...conceptual categories and human subjectivity limit our ability to formulate truth.

It's disheartening to share with someone how much we love the Bible, how excited we are to read it, to savor the words, to let them soak into our skin... only to have our reverie interrupted by, "You believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale, don't you?" It's very discouraging to worship with brothers and sisters, glorifying God together, only to have one of those brothers notice your tattoo/earring/cigarettes/weird hair/environmental T-shirt, and say, "Are you a liberal?" The reality is, as Dave points out, post-evagelicals are evangelicals, and post-moderns aren't liberal or conservative - they are post-labels, post-categorization. They are simply followers of Jesus who see life differently than other followers of Jesus. (Note: They are following, and they are following Jesus.) - Mike Yaconelli

08 - Is the Bible the Word of God?
...immense respect for the Bible... keen to rediscover its relevance for their lives and world.

...backlog of negative feelings about the way they have seen the Bible used.

...struggle with the "strangeness" of the biblical world compared to their own day-to-day reality.

Does it occur to anyone else these days that maybe we have things backward? We're so anxious to make the"strange world" of the Bible speak to the "real world" of today. Maybe it's our world today that's strange, and the biblical alternative is real, and it's the church's job to help people see that. In fact, this could be part of what it means to be transformed in mind. - Mark Galli
[This makes WAY MORE SENSE!]

Mr Evans Meets Ms Tomkins

Naturally, these two portraits are caricatures to set up the post-evangelical middle way. But as the quoting of Karl Barth shows, this middle way is neither post-evangelical nor new; his middle way has been around for som 70 years. Mainline evangelicals have been studying the Bible while avoiding literal and liberal pitfalls for decades now. And they haven't all used Barht's neo-orthodox approach, either. - Mark Galli
[And the "middle way" is, itself, an extreme.]

Many people who grew up in churches that took a literalistic approach to Scripture later find themselves unable to sidestep the nasty critical questions. Some are swamped with doubts about biblical credibility when exposed to scholarly studies during college, or when they start reading more serious literature on the Bible or theology. Others struggle with faith when they are engulfed by some personal crisis that confronts them with complex moral and ethical decisions.

The Inerrancy Debate - A Pointless Diversion
"One gets the impression that its [the Bible's] chief task is to point away from itself to something or someone who is far more important."

There are plenty of (propositional!) good arguments here as to why the Bible is not inerrant or propositionally authoritative, as well as good discussions on how it should be understood via symbol and story. But then why should we bother with the Bible at all? This is the question I've not heard answered well in post-evangelical circles. - Mark Galli
[Because it gives us a picture of God that is more nuanced than the one we discover/experience on our own.]

An Honest Dialogue
The Bible as Word of God - In What Sense?
Barth had a sophisticated understanding of the "word of God" as God's revelation. Not much interested in the inerrancy debate, Barth saw revelation as parimarily personal rather than verbal and as the self-disclosure of God rather than as a set of propositions. The word of God, said Barth, has a threefold form: the primary form is the living Word expressed in Jesus Christ; the secondary form is the written word of Scripture, which testifies to the living Word; and the third form is the proclaimed word which is the church's proclamation of Christ the living Word. The three are inextricably linked together, the Word of God in Christ being primary. The Bible, said Barth, is not in itself revelation; instead it testifies to the revelation of God in Christ. "No one who reads the Bible carefully," he says, "whill find in it any claim that its texts are, as such, a revelation of God." On the other hand, he continues, it's equally wrong to say (like the liberals) that the Bible merely includes the revelation of God. The whole Bible, he insists, is "pregnant with revelation."

The idea that we can know the Bible like we can know the instruction book for my television is preposterous. To believe that we can march through all of its pages and capture its meaning and plumb all its depths with scolarly precision is to diminish and demean the Bible. As Parker Palmer so eloquently points out, "We do not know the Truth, it knows us." This way of knowing is at the heart of the postmodern view of truth. Truth is not something we conttal or capture or rame. truth is wild, mysterious, alive, and always on the prowl to capture, confront, and find us! The jbob of the seminary is not to explain the Bible but to strike terror into the heart of anyone who decides to read its pages. True scholars have not declawed the Bible. Quite the contrary. True scholars teach us to approach the Scriptures with deep respect. They usher us into its pages with awe and wonder, fear and excitement. The Bible is truly "pregnant with revelation." - Mike Yaconelli

Still, any search for an absolute and unconditional source of divine revelation in Scripture, Barth believed, inevitably faced the limitations of the biblical authors and the relativity of their time and culture.

...Bible as both God's word and a human word.

The entire Bible is human word, subject to the strains, weaknesses, and errors of any human product, and therefore requires examination and study with all the critical methods available. Yet it is also divine word in that it has something to say which doesn't arise merely out of human thought or culture. Therefore it must also be studied with a listening ear, to hear what God will say through it.

Finally, Barth spoke of the Bible becoming, rather than being, the word of God. Barth thought it possible to read the Bible and even study it in a scholarly manner, and never hear God speak at all - just as one might have encountered Jesus and never seen beyond his humanity. The word of God in this sense is not a static quality of the Bible, but something that comes into being as God speaks through it in a living and dynamic way - why Barth says it is pregnant with revelation.

Barth's threefold understanding of the word of God contains some key insidghts and helps us think more clearly about a very important biblical phrase. But it remains true that Scripture contains words that are, in some sense, to be equated with the word of God. That is, the words of Scripture matter, not just the overall biblical story or the biblical metaphors. If we don't take these words seriously as words, within their grammatical context, we risk reading our own ideas into Scripture and fashioning God after our own image. - Mark Galli

How Does the Bible Speak God's Word?
"WORD OF GOD" - A METAPHOR
To say Scripture is the word of God is to employ a metaphor.

"WORD OF GOD" - A SYMBOLIC REVELATION
Bear in mind that revelation, as we've discussed it, is not primarily about imparting facts, but the disclosure of a person. Revelation is the "divine self-gift which has been taking place from the moment of creation and will continue to the end of time."

Our primary attention, and our faith-response to the Bible, is not merely to words, but to the One who is sacramentally revealed through the words.

How Do We Hear God's Word?

Language is God's gift to us, not exhaustive but sufficient to express the truths that need to be expressed to draw people to God, to prompt goodness, and to thwart destructive teaching (heresy). - Mark Galli
[Yes. We cannot communicate specifically enough without words, though they are insufficient themselves.]

...Scripture does not automatically become the living and dynamic word of God to the reader. Two key words - faith and imagination - explain how the word of God can come alive in spite of our limited human perspective.

"Take it on faith"
...we cannot know things from the outside; in order to know something we must "indwell" it, that is, "cease to handle things and become immersed in them."

...presuppositions are not to be seen as enemies of honest research but as basic essentials. But this faith element is not, in Polanyi's judgment, a matter of cold choice; it arises out of a kind of intuitive compulsion - call it a hunch - which provides the impetus for faith.

...when we adopt one way of looking at things, we automatically exclude other ways of looking at them. Faith has a necessary exclusiveness about it.

...if something is conceivable, it is also conceivably wrong.

...at the very heart of faith there must be a dialectical tension between commitment and doubt.
[duality]

The important issue for post-evangelicals is to not individualize our experiences with the Bible, but instead hear it and seek to live it in community - locally, globally, and historically. The failure of the modern understanding of the Bible is the belief that any one person can extract pure and clean belief from it. - Doug Pagitt

"Use your imagination"

What is it about the imagination that's made it the enemy of some evangelicals? Why are many evangelicals afraid of imagination, afraid of meditation and contemplation? Where were they taught that the mind is a dangerous place, populated with demons and evil spirits ready to barge in on any imaginative thought? For decades this kind of thinking has robbed Christians of experiencing God through lectio dvina, journaling, and meditation. Evangelical obsession with Bible study and theology has kept the majority of the church from interacting with Scripture, personally meeting God in Scripture, and becoming intimate with the words of Scripture. One amazing way to combat the busyniess of our society and the worship of speed is through peace and solitude and quiet in the act of contemplating God's Word. This new generation of postmoderns wants more than words; they want to know what's beyond words. They are ready to accept that the Word of God is more than reading material, it's a way of living - an expression of the difference that knowing God makes. - Mike Yaconelli

...revelation is essentially symbolic. Symbols operate at an intuitive, rather than a purely rational level, and imagination is the medium for intuition.

...faith itself operates on an intuitive and imaginative level.

There may be nothing more important to a post-evangelical understanding of the Bible than the use of imagination. This imaginative process must be done in community and is often heightened by the participation of artists. This sits in contrast to the reductionistic, scientific approach of modern evangelicalism. May we find the success in this effort that those who held a rationalistic understanding of the Bible found in theirs. - Doug Pagitt

Imagination is, after all, a quintessential human act, and can challenge all our settled certitudes.

...imagination is the ability to see the world as it might be rather than as it is.

...seedbed of transformation...

Meditation. This is a form of mental reflection in which the mind moves back and forth through a particular passage, narrative, or character.

Contemplation. Contemplation tries to give expression to deep inner emotions of thankfulness, love, or trust toward God in a kind of mystic communion. ...less reflective and less concerned with fresh mental insights than meditation. ... If it is to remain Christian, contemplation needs to be funded by the great images and symbols of the Christian narrative. It can quite often be used as an extension of meditation.

Recitation and Storytelling. ...when the oral testimonies in Scripture were first written down, they were not intended for silent reading - they were meant to be read aloud. Literacy should not rob us of the enormous benefits of reading Scripture aloud! The skidlls of reading and telling stories have been swallowed up in the more directive and less allusive craft of writing texts.

Art Therapy/Bible Meditation. Imagination is a way of breaking with words while still interacting with them. ...all kinds of good things can begin to happen as we portray the feelings and ideas emerging out of the symbolism of Scripture.

Bible Study. ...communal experience that heightens the imaginative process. ...diverse forms of imaginative sstudy, including everything from drama to storytelling, from clay modeling to role-play, from drawing to memory games.

Theological Study. The word of God can be imaginatvely brought to life in the midst of the academic enterprise. C.S. Lewis spoke scathingly of much devotional study of Scripture, which he saw as frequently awash in sentimentalism. He spoke of loving nothing more than puzzling over a tough theological issue with a pencil in his hand and a pipe between his teeth. ...we can say that the Bible is God's word provided we recognize that the "word" is an event mediated by the Bible and not the book itself. ...we need to approach it both with all available critical skills, and with the imaginative faith through which we will experience God revealing himself.

09 - Positively Worldly

This is a seminal issue in the post-evangelical distinction. Post-evangelical communities like ours define our following of Jesus not simply by right belief, but also in right life. It's our intention to be a blessing of God for the world. Our conviction is that the call of the church is to "download the intentions of God into the operating system of the world." For congregations like ours, there is no intention to be protected from the world, but rather to bring about the dreams and love of God in our world. This is in significant contrast to classic evangelicalism. It was Oswald Chambers, who - like many evangelicals who champion a personal experience with God over usefulness to the world - writes, "The great enemy of the Lord Jesus Christ today is the idea of practical work that has no basis in the New Testament, but comes from the systems of the world... The central point of the kingdom of Jesus Christ is personal relationship with him, not public usefulness to others." (My Utmost for His Highest, October 19) Many post-evangelicals simply disagree and seek to live useful lives in the way of Jesus and believe that you shouldn't separate the words you use from the life you live. - Doug Pagitt

The Parallel Universe
Evangelicals have created a cultural parallel universe
[Yes, and I hate it.]

Post-evangelicals want a relationship with the world as participant Christians.

Post-evangelicals also look at secular culture more positively as a place where God is also graciously at work.

...more hopeful view of the human condition...

"A Bundle of Contradictions"
On one hand Adam was formed from the dust of the earth, while on the other he was made alive by the breath of God. Humans were created in the image of God.
[duality]

We can choose to grow spiritually, morally, and intellectually. The imago Dei is not a fixed "nature" but a capacity to "be" God-like.

For many post-evangelicals, a holistic view of humankind is very attractive, as opposed to the dualistic view encouraged here. Many evangelicals hold a Western-Greek view of God - God is "out there" and needs to be pursued - while many post-evangelicals find connection with an Eastern-Hebraic understanding that implies God can be found in people. This distinction influences how PEs experience God, pursue Christian faith, and view each other. - Doug Pagitt

...the image of God has been crippled by sin.

I don't believe we need to clarify the effects of sin; we need to be about articulating a better understanding of sin altogether. Could it be that now is the time not only to look anew at our old categories, but also to develop new understandings of sin and salvation for our world? - Doug Pagitt

...the image of God in humanity, though defaced, is not effaced.

...sin doesn't have the last word.

...while humans cannot redeem themselves, this very helplessness evokes a search for the grace that can solve our predicament.

Modernity has determinde how we viewed sin and the image of God. Might an emerging culture give us new ways of looking at these matters? Most of the people I know will readily admit that something is badly screwed up in their lives. Many even use the term "sin." The abused and the abuser, the dealer and the user, the addicted and the hurting - they all know about the power of sin. But do they know the power of God's goodness? Many who know they're sinners and have experienced evil at the hands of others have difficulty acknowledging that God's image resides in them. - Holly Rankin Zaher

There is surely a significant difference between the knowledge of and the presence of God's grace. Some may have knowledge yet have little existential presence of grace, while others may have little knowledge of it yet a great deal of its existential presence.

Rather than looking at things territorially - the church as God's (therefore safe) territory, and the world as the Devils' (therefore dangerous) territory - or dealing with rigid categories ("church and world," or "Christian and secular," et cetera), we should see God at work in his world, revealing himself in all kinds of ways and responding to the inner yearnings and the faith-commitments of people everywhere. The world then ceases to be clear-cut, and we find ourselves dealing not only with the "bundle of contradictions" in the human situation, but also with the eternal Being who loves the world and is poured out for its sake.

A World of Difference
Culture determines how we think and feel, directs our actions and defines our outlook on life. Cultural identity is an inescapable human reality.

Our entire concept of God is also conditioned by culture - both by other, often ancient, cultures, and our own.

If theology is to make any sense, it must not only use language, but it must use the language of its surrounding culture, which in turn affects what theology is saying and how it is understood. Theology must always be formulated and reformulated as cultural conditions change.

Culture is a paradoxical intermixture of the earthy and the transcendent...
[not paradox - duality]

Non-Christians can be wise, do good, and experience God's grace. No culture is black and white; all culture is paradoxical and contradictory.

The Fingerprints of God
One reason secular culture tends to be more evocative and stimulating is the greater freedom non-Christians have to explore the full gamut of human emotion.

An enormous amount of creativity stems from the darker side of the human experience.
[the descent Parker J. Palmer wrote of.]

...evangelicals treat sexual matters and innuendo and erotic feelings as forbidden territory, too.

Because of the problems Dave cites here, the evangelical church has lost many artists in the modern age. Many were not invited to share their gifts or perhaps not welcomed at all. So now the evangelical church has to recover the arts, much like the church of the Reformation after its iconoclastic excesses. How will the evangelical church do it? - Holly Rankin Zaher

Post-evangelicals must be careful to not assume that it's the quality of art that makes it Christian. "Good" post-evangelical art may not significantly help the world. Post-evangelicals must suggest a new message, not simply a more effectively executed message. The issue Dave may be raising is the need for the church to be led by artists - not simply to benefit from their quality work. - Doug Pagitt
[this makes sense, since it is in art that we are most closely found & through the act of creation that we most emulate God.]

The world, like the individual, is an ambivalent bundle of contradictions.

Engagement requires discernment - not swallowing secularity whole.

...one cannot possibly criticize a culture without understanding it...

We have to find a way of engaging positively - even transform - our culture without giving in to its anti-Christian influences.

1. ...we need more communal relfection on issues raised by contemporary culture. ... Put some structure into the discussion. Don't make up themes on the run; decide on them ahead of time. Appoint an informal chairperson to keep the discussion on track. Finally, avoid the temptation to formulate a Christian "line" on issues; don't be afraid of open-ended conclusions.
   [kind of like THING]
   
2. ...continually use the biblical text as the context for thinking about and discussing the issues raised. Don't try to apply the Bible in a textbook or rulebook style to contemporary issues. ...allow Scripture to fund deliberation, to act as a lens through which we view the contemporary world. ... Groups can help individuals overcome these difficulties. In a group different people think differently. Some people tackle issues pragmatically while others tend to think theologically or biblically. Each approach is a necessary complement to the other.
3. ...maintain uncompromised integrity. The conscience is a flawed and fallible apparatus, inevitably in a state of constant readjustment. ..."whatever is not of faith is sin" (Romans 14.23). ...it's probably more important that we're true to our convictions than whether or not our convictions were correct.

Wherever we turn in God's world we find his fingerprints. Not just in the glories of the countryside, but also in the tangled web of human life and culture.

God has not given up on it, and neither should we.

10 - Christianity For a New Age
...an increasing number of people see themselves as post-evangelical, and many more identify with what post-evangelical means without actually using the term.

...linked to a fundamental cultural shift underway in the Western world: a shift from the modern to the postmodern.

Some evangelicals have responded to the shift by returning (in some cases with a vengeance) to the older certainties.

For many of us, however, this approach just won't do. We identify with those who are willing to engage more positively with the new situation and who also believe it has much to offer Chrstians, just as they have much to offer to it.

To some extent the comfort level one has with one of the other approach depends on the degree to which he or she actually lives in the world of the postmodern (or, as I would put it, the real) world or the degree to which one tries to avoid it.

A church history professor of mine once recalled the seminary environment in the early 1970s. Some students were young conservatives fresh out of Bible college; others were hippies who came to Christ through the "Jesus movement." The professor described the cultural tension back then by saying one group knew all the right answers and none of the questions, while the other knew all the right questions but none of the answers. The people I pastor are similarly divided, althrough, on balance, more have thoughtful questions than easy answers. I want both groups to engage in open dialogue. - Timothy Keel
[that's when Dad went to seminary.]

And how will we know the questions unless we listen? This type of listening does not occur during the typical church program. Post-evangelicals create space in their lives to listen to each other's stories and questions. - Holly Rankin Zaher

...people now reject truth claims that are expressed in the form of dogma or aboslutes.

...dignity is granted to emotions and intuition...

...people are accustomed to communicating through words linked to images and symbols rather than merely through plain words or simple statements.

...people have come to feel a close affinity with the environment, and where there is a strong sense of global unity.

Evangelicals struggle to articulate a compelling theology of creation because most evangelical theology is subsumed into soteriology - the theology of salvation. Evangelicals want to know how to save people. This theological preoccupation, however, is passing away. Jason Clark, a pastor in the United Kingdom, observes that most of the issues to which the world wants answers relate to creation: ecology, gender roles, sexuality, and anthropology (which addresses a host of sub-issues, including "What does it mean to be human?" "When does life begin?" and "How do we deal with the powerless?" to name a few). Evangelicals focused on getting people into the next life don't have answers for such questions - and they should. - Timothy Keel

...people are deeply suspicious of institutions, bureaucracies, and hierarchies.

...the spiritual dimension is once again talked about with eagerness and ease. Post-evangelical people, I think, are people who belong to, or are influenced by, this world and whose Christian faith is increasingly being expressed in and through this frame of reference.

Hunger for spirituality is all around us...

Unfortunately most people are not turning to the church to satisfy this hunger; instead many are turning to some expression of the New Age movement.

...the vast majority of New Agers are engaged in a serious search for God.
[This I agree with, but they have been deceived. To say anything else is to deny the Truth of Christ.]

1. The evangelical gospel tends to be much too "refined." [True, but the Bible must be taken as a whole!] The prepackaged evangelical gospel is really their own construction out of a lot of little unconnected biblical pieces that - in their original contexts - were usually not part of a larger, evangelical sort of system.
2. We need to take seriously Brueggemann's idea of "funding the postmodern imagination." Rather than offering truth in the form of a dogmatic grand scheme, we must invite people to dream up their own blibically informed "fresh configurations."
3. In a similar vein, the usual approach to presenting the gospel assumes that "we've got it - you need it!" ...the language of journey is more helpful. ... Evangelism should be seen as opportunity to "fund" people's spiritual journeys, drawing on the highly relevant resources of "little pieces" of truth contained in the Christian narrative. ...those who evangelize often look for quick results... "The gradual process is the way in which the majority of people discover God," he [John Finney] says, "and the average time is about four years: models of evangelism which can help people along the pathway are needed." The journey concept is apparently borne out by the facts. ...willingness to admit to the ups and downs of our own journey. ... We all know only in part, we experience only in part, and in a postmodern world, it's crucial that we're honest about this limitation. Sadly, the organized church is the biggest stumbling block of all to the postmodern. ...people see in the church a remnant of what they see and reject in the outside world: hierarchies, bureaucracies, and power struggles. ... This is not a time for churches to be working toward "bigger," "better," and "more powerful"; it's a time for the church to follow the example of its Lord and divest itself of its power, with all the personality jostling, political maneuverings, and empire-building that goes with it - the postmodern world is not impressed!
   

And Finally...

How do we encourage each other during this cultural transition? Will post-evangelicals - even with insecurity - create a new culture? - Holly Rankin Zaher

"When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure."