Postmodernism and the Emerging Church

Postmodernism and the Emerging Church

  • Submitted By: lmlsca
  • Date Submitted: 04/23/2013 3:55 PM
  • Category: Religion
  • Words: 3853
  • Page: 16
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he astounding love of God in Jesus Christ spends itself utterly for the transformation of creation and humankind. Courage is needed to discover again and again what God’s purposes are and the mission to which we are called. We are ever at the threshold of finding new frontiers of faith and partnership with God. – R. Wijesinghe (private journal)
There is a new way of being Christian that is emerging in the Protestant churches of the Western World. This new way is both the result of, and a mirror to, the paradigm changes that are occurring within society, as massive developments in technology, the information highway, and increased globalization are causing a shift from a modern to a postmodern way of thinking. The emerging church has developed as a response to perceived difficulties in the more traditional church that arose from Reformation and Enlightenment thought. Borg argues that these two visions-- the earlier belief-centered paradigm and the emerging paradigm (Borg, 2003) -- are now so different that they are like two separate religions. (Borg, 2006) There is often strong conflict between the two, as the Fundamentalists, many Evangelical Conservative Christians, and some mainline mainstream Christians see the emerging church as a watered down version of Christianity, producing “an anemic, politically correct, and vaguely theistic humanism.” (Borg, 2006, p. 10) On the other side, “emerging Christians often see the more rigid forms of the earlier vision as anti-intellectual, literalistic, judgmental, self-righteous, and uncritically committed to right wing politics.” (Borg, 2006, p.10) Although many of these differences appear random and unrelated, they stem from the transition to a new worldview that is occurring as society shifts from the modern era to the postmodern era.
The traditional belief-based vision of Protestantism is strongly influenced by the worldview of the modern era from which it developed. Modernism promotes the ideas...

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