Have We Made a Postmodern Turn? A Well-balanced View
Keith DeRose has posted part one of a planned two part response to an interaction between him and Brian McLaren over to what extent (if any) there has been a major historical turn into a postmodern era, and to what extent it has or should effect the church. I was encouraged by the irenic* tone that DeRose has set. In part one, he largely agrees with McLaren that there is a difference between radical academic postmodernism and the cultural phenomenon of postmodernism. McLaren, DeRose, and all thoughtful emergent/post-conservatives that I know of soundly reject the radical relativism of the former. Where DeRose seems to differ with McLaren is over the size and extent of the latter.
I look forward to part two, where DeRose promises to show why, though he may differ with McLaren on how much we are “postmodern,” he at the same time refuses to join the bevy of conservative critics who scream “the sky is falling!” every time some Christian identifies himself as postmodern.
*By now my readers should realize that “irenic” is one of my favorite learned-at-seminary words. 
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November 13th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Hmm. I would have thought that relativism was endemic to the “cultural phenomenon of postmodernism” rather than “academic postmodernism” (e.g., my students are much more inclined toward relativism than my more postmodern-thinking colleagues who look upon relativism with disdain). But perhaps the qualifier “radical” is what’s supposed to turn academic postmodernism relativistic, a particular subspecies of academia that I can attest does indeed exist?
November 13th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
Good questions, Joel. That’s exactly why I included “radical” in my label. I realize that most academics today reject total relativism, so I assumed that DeRose is making reference to some of the godfather’s of academic postmodern literary and philosphical approaches who often did go overboard in their deconstructions.
On the other hand, while it is probably true that your students appear quite relativistic, they are probably not consistently so. In other words, I’ll bet if you pressed them on things that really matter personally to them, you’d find some pretty absolutist opinions. In any case, I think DeRose and McLaren are discussing “cultural postmodernism” in a Christian context, the extent to which it has affected the Church, which in no case that I know of has been an embrassing or relativism.
November 13th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
I found it interesting that a lot of Britons (particularly Christian Britons, in my college) leaned towards the idea that we are entering, or already in, a “post-postmodernism”, which is actually shifting back towards absolutes - examples being the huge rise in the Muslim faith in the US and the UK, particularly among whites, and shift in Christian young people towards more definitive doctrines. I wonder sometimes if postmodernism/Emergent just *seems* a lot more pervasive because they yell the loudest.
(Aaaand, that’s my two pence.)
November 13th, 2005 at 8:28 pm
And I wonder if you may just be right about that, Michaela. For all the noise we’re making about it, it doesn’t seem to me like Emergent has spread much beyond the white Starbucks and Birkenstocks crowd. But to me the real post-postmodernism might not be religious fundamentalism, but (I hope!) a Christianity of “chastened modernity”…having learned to hold on to the best of modernity’s gifts of reasoned analysis while rejecting its arrogance and foundationalism.
November 13th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
Well said, Sage.
And…you gotta problem with Starbucks?! NO CHRISTMAS PRESENTS FROM ME, THEN!
Michaela
Barista Extraordinnaire
November 13th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
You are not supposed to read my comments on other blogs! Can’t a guy have a private fantasy life away from his own blog? Sheesh!
November 13th, 2005 at 10:36 pm
Starbucks sucks. Infusion rules (in Philly). And in Missoula…Liquid Planet (great coffee, free internet, and killer breakfast crepes with interesting people who will actually talk to you. The onlything better is roasting your own. Why am I posting this? I don’t know? Back to the books…
November 13th, 2005 at 10:46 pm
And Traphagen, if you’re knocking Birks … I’m driving to Philly to kick your butt!
November 13th, 2005 at 11:10 pm
I just realized that my Starbucks comment back to Mic made no sense whatsoever. I’d forgotten that I made the “Starbucks and Birkenstocks” comment here. I’d just been part of a discussion about coffee brands over on Scot McKnight’s blog where Starbucks was being roundly dissed, and thought Mic had seen that.
I need to read my own blog more often.
November 13th, 2005 at 11:46 pm
Chacos trump Birks.
November 14th, 2005 at 12:23 am
Mark: I was going to be polite and not bring it up. This thing happens, though … if you don’t leave yourself breadcrumbs, well, sometimes you forget where you said stuff.
Karyn: I’m gonna cry myself to sleep tonight because of this slight.
November 14th, 2005 at 12:29 am
Hey, try ‘em… you’ll never go back.
November 14th, 2005 at 6:47 am
I’m very nearly to the point of wanting to declare a moratorium on the term “postmodern” (and even, perhaps, “post-postmodern”) since it seems to mean everything and nothing. And you’re right about students not being consistently relativist. But then again, who is? I just wish folks would name names and cite texts when they start talking about these things. I can handle a discussion of, say, Lyotard or Foucault, but I increasingly am finding the discussions of larger cultural trends to be amorphous and unhelpful at best.
Starbuck, by the way, is cool, but there’s better coffee to be found. I can’t comment on Birks vs Chacos.
November 14th, 2005 at 7:26 am
Thing is Geof, I adopted your del.icio.us breadcrumb method the moment I read about it on your site. Works great with Google Sidebar’s Web Clips, which picks up whenever one of the bookmarked comment threads changes.
But breadcrumbs don’t really help my memory. Maybe I need to eat more fish.
November 14th, 2005 at 7:33 am
Geof, we need to alert Keith the Seattle Coffee Snob to this discussion.
Joel, so you want a postmortem on postmodernism?
I’m with you on that, but unfortunately as long as conservative critics keep up with the “emergent = postmodern = relativistic” we’ll have to be talking about something no one can define. 
November 14th, 2005 at 9:44 am
That or less M&M’s-based beer.
Oh, no. We can let him be on that score.
But Mark … when has a lack of definition ever stopped anyone from arguing from ignorance on the Interweb?
November 14th, 2005 at 10:04 am
I’ve never heard of Chacos; I’ll have to check them out. While I don’t know Geof, I think I can safely say, sitting here wearing my Birki Rubber clogs, that if he tries to kick your butt with his Birkenstocks, he will most likely launch them across the room before his foot gets to your butt. Whether that constitutes an additional danger or not is hard to predict.
November 14th, 2005 at 11:53 am
Don’t feel bad about that, Matthew.
Right about now, Mark is probably wishing he didn’t, either!
I wear Tatamis [made by Birkenstock], which have a heel strap and and stay in place when I kick butt.
However, today … today, I’m wearing my steel-toed boots.
November 14th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
Aha! Good thinking, Geof. Perhaps in the future I should purchase a pair of butt-kicking Birkenstocks and a pair of non-butt-kicking Birkenstocks. Or I could just go with the very sensible steel-toe boots as you have done. That or work on my shoe launching aim.
November 14th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
I love how this thread has digressed into a conversation on Birkenstocks.
And there are better places to get coffee than the Bucks, that’s certain, but they pay me, so I can’t actually say that.
(And they treat their employees WELL.)
November 14th, 2005 at 3:04 pm
Pish. Controls is someone else’s problem!
GFM <– just lights the candle
November 14th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
And I thought all you Birki folks were peace-loving tree huggers!
November 15th, 2005 at 10:49 am
We are. I have never kicked a tree’s butt. (I don’t even know if I could find a tree’s butt!)
November 15th, 2005 at 11:38 am
You’re saying I should grow my hair out, huh?
[I could easily make myself into a pacifist.]
November 15th, 2005 at 5:58 pm
Geof: If we’re talking about kicking my butt so much, I will be fervently praying for your pacifist conversion!
November 15th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
I thought we were talking about kicking Karyn’s butt … but I’m afraid of her, so I’ll take kicking you.
GFM <– would rather hug you
November 15th, 2005 at 7:50 pm
Hugs back atcha, big guy….and you are wise to be afraid!
November 15th, 2005 at 8:48 pm
I haven’t met her, but I would never, ever think of trying to kick Karyn’s butt. Besides the fact that it would be ungentlemanly, I seem to remember a picture of her with a big, honking sword. Yikes!