Postmodern Theology and the Emerging Church: Faith in a Post-Christendom World

Summary of the Argument

The postmodern turn in Western culture has created both challenges and opportunities for Christian theology and the church. The collapse of the grand narratives of modernity—the Enlightenment's confidence in reason, progress, and universal truth—has created a cultural context in which the church's claims to absolute truth are viewed with suspicion. But it has also created an opening for the church to recover dimensions of the Christian tradition that modernity had marginalized: mystery, community, embodied practice, and the particularity of the gospel story.

The emerging church movement, which emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, sought to engage postmodern culture by developing new forms of church that were more participatory, more communal, and more attentive to the aesthetic and experiential dimensions of faith. Figures like Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and Shane Claiborne challenged the evangelical church's accommodation to consumer culture and called for a more radical engagement with the teachings of Jesus. While the emerging church movement has been criticized for theological ambiguity and doctrinal compromise, it has also generated important conversations about the nature of the church, the gospel, and Christian discipleship in a postmodern world.

Critical Evaluation

Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Theology

The engagement between postmodern philosophy and Christian theology has produced both fruitful insights and significant dangers. Postmodern thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Jean-Francois Lyotard have challenged the Enlightenment's confidence in reason, universal truth, and the autonomous subject in ways that resonate with the Christian tradition's critique of human pride and self-sufficiency. Their emphasis on the particularity of knowledge, the importance of community and tradition, and the limits of human reason provides resources for a Christian epistemology that takes seriously the finitude and fallibility of human knowing.

But postmodern philosophy also poses significant dangers for Christian theology. Its tendency toward relativism—the denial of any universal truth or objective reality—threatens the Christian claim that the gospel is true for all people in all times and places. Its deconstruction of all grand narratives threatens the Christian claim that the biblical story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation is the true story of the world. And its suspicion of all authority threatens the Christian claim that Scripture and tradition are authoritative guides for faith and practice.

The Emerging Church and Its Legacy

The emerging church movement's legacy is mixed. Its recovery of the importance of community, embodied practice, and aesthetic experience in Christian worship has enriched the broader evangelical movement. Its challenge to consumer Christianity and its call for a more radical engagement with the teachings of Jesus have inspired many Christians to take discipleship more seriously. But its theological ambiguity, its sometimes uncritical accommodation to postmodern culture, and its tendency to deconstruct without reconstructing have also generated legitimate concerns about doctrinal integrity.

Relevance to Modern Church

Contemporary Significance

The challenges of postmodern culture continue to shape the church's mission and ministry in the twenty-first century. The decline of Christendom in the West, the rise of religious pluralism, and the growing suspicion of institutional religion all create a context in which the church must find new ways of communicating the gospel and embodying the community of faith. Understanding the postmodern context and the church's responses to it is essential for effective ministry in the contemporary world.

For ministry professionals, engagement with postmodern theology and the emerging church provides resources for understanding the cultural context of contemporary ministry and for developing forms of church that are both theologically faithful and culturally engaged. For credentialing in church history and contemporary theology, Abide University offers programs that engage these important questions.

Implications for Ministry and Credentialing

Engagement with postmodern theology and the emerging church provides resources for understanding the cultural context of contemporary ministry and for developing forms of church that are both theologically faithful and culturally engaged. For credentialing in church history, Abide University offers programs recognizing expertise in contemporary theology.

For ministry professionals seeking to formalize their expertise, the Abide University Retroactive Assessment Program offers a pathway to academic credentialing that recognizes prior learning and pastoral experience.