3/03/2004 09:30:00 AM

{more archives for dan}

in further discussion regarding this:

Ok, I wrote a response to JJ after his first post yesterday, but the response seemed to go on and on without end so I did not post it. Today I reconsidered and thought I might as well through it out there--despite being far too long for a blog post comment--as I, unfortuneately, do not have the time to edit and develop it in any other form. Cheers!

________________________


I think you've nailed it, John. Fear of the heresy hunter is the narcotic stealing the productive years of many a new theologian/pastor/normal shmo.

There are different readiness factors across the scene of contemporary Christianity. McLaren and others have wisely recognized this and contented themselves with, from all accounts, quite a successful practice of pushing their constituents through publishing and conferencing in ways that, while seemingly radical to those being challenged, are perceived as a paltry restatement of what has been said by many outside of the Christian noosphere for sometime (Levinas, Quine, Rorty, Derrida, Foucault, and in the case of McLaren's second in his "A New Kind of Christian" trilogy, Jared Diamond) pandering to Christian subcultures all along the spectrum from totally incapable of comprehending the intellectual heritage of their moment to those who read bits but see it as little more than fodder in their reinstantiation of a hyper-Reformed, Schaefferian presuppositional apologetic-fueled, rationalist faith or as overcome by various returns to a buffet-style classical foundationalism from whichever period one's historical predilections privilege a la the ancient-future evangelicals (Webber, et al), the Cambridge school (Radical Orthodoxy) or the contemporary make-overs of any of the thousands of Nicene splinters shaved off of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

To a younger generation no longer casting about in the plausibility structures of their parent's variously compromised revolutions (as much as I hate using generational language it seems to come so easily at this moment) these postures of slow-go theological rethinking seem more in line with the vocational security of those vesting in the old systems than about the natural processes of transformation that, often do take large quantities of time but, usually build to a place of bursting out onto the scene in such a way as to surprise those advocating what seemed to be the more prudent stance of carefully preserving their place in the political and economic org charts that feed off of the old ideology machines of tight identity positions, gated communities, and “spiritual disciplines” that revolve around organizational goals of attendance, fund-raising and other lock-ins that ensure a level of institutional viability that can only be secured by the trickle-down spiritual economy etched into the very architectures of these systems.

The Amway-Christianity of 40 Days of Purpose, Alpha, Christian Radio, TV and Publishing has nothing to say outside of the echo chambers of the various major and minor brands of Christianity, Inc. and those few in the wider culture who still share a modicum of the cultural idioms bandied about in the marketing efforts of such brands within their target markets. The cone of the unknown, with regard to the post-structural critique that is at this moment driving much of the call to rethink the sign, “gospel,” is so broad for those inside of these institutions that when they first hear about these things and then hear an Emerging Church leader say that we won’t have substantively reconsidered our theology for a generation or more it seems to make perfect sense.

Just moving the quarter-inch from the various for-profit domestications of the gospel as offered by the competing brands in the Christian market segment to considering this New Kind of Christian thinking was vertigo inducing in its playful reordering of the way one speaks of things Christian. If it is that hard to move a quarter of an inch in the informal devotional life of an individual how much more so to begin rethinking the very manner in which gospel is spoken of and academically considered within a formally theological framework. Or at least so says the somewhat rogue, New Christian Leader, still within the Amway-Christian economy as they speak to their downline at a rally that still revolves around showing the plan, sponsoring new people, listening to tapes and doing enough each month to secure their BV bonus level.

The system itself is suspect! ...It is not in the interest of an Emerging Church leader’s professional viability to substantially reconsider the vocabulary, spacing and diction of salvation. It is not in the interest of preserving a direct deposit paycheck into an upper middle class bank account to do substantively reconsidered theological work that finds itself unable to simply invent new taglines for a brand too long monopolizing the memory of a poor, earnest prophet from the backwaters of an occupied Israel.

How difficult is it to begin doing theology that takes having no privileged starting place seriously? How difficult is it to begin preaching within a tradition now in touch with an intricately woven global patchwork of traditions that are each internally plausible and, potentially, as consistent and inconsistent as their internal definitions of coherence and acceptable orthopraxy allow for? How difficult is it, really, to begin to give contingency and genealogy—those symptoms of a certain founding undecidability that is the space of our unfolding as a cosmos—the presuppositional place that would be necessary for the new theological thinking to begin?

Not all that hard, really. One simply has to—and it is already happening. If you do not read blogs or message board threads you are likely missing out on the new thinking that is already taking place. There is no need to wait. It is here.

Posted by: Dan Hughes at February 26, 2004 06:58 PM