The Christian Postmodernity

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The Christian ConditionEncounter - 24 June 2007

Is Christianity a rival, an ally or a coping mechanism in the post-modern

empire? Anglican Bishop Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, addressed thisquestion in front of Melbourne Anglicans and he was joined in the discusionby Rev Dr Andrew McGowan, Director of Trinity College Theological School,University of Melbourne. Encounter presents an edited version of thediscussion.

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Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee itscomplete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifyingspeakers.

Margaret Coffey: On ABC Radio National time for Encounter.

Tom Wright: I love talking about postmodernity and I worry that it is a big

turn-off for a lot of people. but I am aware that certainly where I live there

and I suspect that where a lot of you live there is a general sense that thingsain't what they used to be culturally, socially ethically etc but it is hard to pin

down, it is hard to put a label on it and many people certainly my age, latefifties, and perhaps that age and older, are tempted just to say well apres

moi la deluge, I'll let it all wash by, I'll enjoy just where I am, and living lifethe way I live it, even if some funny things seem to be going on elsewhere...

Unfortunately I think life is too urgent for that right now. Since September11, since all sorts of things that have happened, the Iraq War and all sorts ofother dangerous noises that are going on in our world, it has become

urgently necessary to be able to address where are we in our culture, whereare we going, what does the Christian Gospel have to say about that, if

anything, how do we navigate our way into this nervous thing we call the21st century.

Margaret Coffey: Hello I'm Margaret Coffey and that was N. T. Wright,

leading Anglican scholar and Bishop of Durham, during a recent visit toAustralia. It's a good moment for an Encounter about post modernism: earlyJune saw the death of the American philosopher Richard Rorty who could wellbe regarded as one of the philosophical creators of what Bishop Tom Wright

calls 'the post modern empire'. Truth was one of Rorty's themes and today'sprogram essentially takes up with the notion of Truth at work in the minds of

Christians in the post modern context. It presents a discussion withMelbourne Anglicans featuring Bishop Tom Wright alongside Trinity College
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based Rev Dr Andrew McGowan. They were addressing the future of theChurch in Australia but, as you will find, the future of the Church isn't an

esoteric subject. It's bound up with questions about politics and justice andthe kinds of communities people want to live in (questions that interestedRichard Rorty too). To begin with, they put the discussion topic in theseterms:

Master of Ceremonies: So we're here to think about Christianity in a post-

modern empire: rival, ally or coping mechanism. ....

Tom Wright: Does the church collude with the post-modern empire, if there

is such a thing, does it challenge it, where are we going with that.

Margaret Coffey: They are questions Bishop Tom Wright will canvas down

the track, but first he defines the terms of the discussion:

Tom Wright: First, just a very brief word about modernism and empire. By

modernism I mean that philosophical and cultural entity which came to birthmore or less in the Western world in the18th century particularly with thegreat dream of progress - the big story the big narrative of progress: wehave now arrived in the modern world, everything that went before us issuperstition, so we now know 'the truth' and our science enables us to

discover the facts, therefore we know who we are, we are the masters of ourfate, we are the captains of our souls. So something about progress,

something about facts, something about who we are. Therefore Empire is notonly a possibility but an obligation. We have the obligation to go and take our

Enlightenment into the rest of the world. And within that there was a view ofevil that said basically we have got evil sussed - it is all to do with

superstition and folly of that sort and now that we have got better drains,and better housing, we're going to have better education and we'll teach the

whole world tolerance and that will be all fine. And to cut a long story short9/11 happens and the postmodern moment. One great narrative collides with

another great narrative, only they are not just narratives, they areaeroplanes and buildings. I remember sitting there in my living room,

watching it on tele, 9/11, but as we were sitting there I thought this isactually what postmodernity is all about - the deconstruction of that storythat says we are the people of progress and enlightenment, therefore wehave got a right to take over the world. Postmodernity says, ah, ah, your

righteousness is like filthy rags, to coin a phrase from Isaiah. And actually,when you say you know the facts, the scientific facts, so you know the truth

and that will set us free, your truth claims are in fact power claims, that's thepostmodern thing. And what about that great enlightenment ego - I am the

master of my fate and the captain of my soul? Well, when you look in themirror if you are a postmodernist, you discover that you are not a fixedunalterable essence. You are actually a shifting mass of floating signifiers.There is a wonderful quote from the jazz musician Charlie Mingus, who says,

When I am playing jazz I am trying to play the truth of who I really am. Thetrouble is I am changing all the time. That's postmodernity.


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Now the point about empire in that context is this. Post modernity has triedto critique empire for I think good reasons. Theologically speaking, I really do

believe that the role of post modernity in the strange providence of God hasbeen to preach the doctrine of the fall to arrogant modernity. Modernitythought it had banished evil by act of parliament. Post modernity says no,actually it is all a mess and the only thing left to do is to play in the shadow

of the falling tower blocks. The bad news from the post modern point of viewis that post modernity can critique empire but it can't actually do anything to

stop it. To put it crudely, all those years of Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault andwe have still got George Bush. All the sound and fury in Harvard and Yale

and other wonderful places on the north east Atlantic coast full ofpostmodern thinkers and they still bomb Iraq. Why do they bomb Iraq?Because the politicians are living out of a modernist dream which says, GoodLord there is some evil out there, we had thought we had banished it, what

are we going to do, oh I tell you, let's go and drop some bombs on it, thatwill make it better won't it. Where does Christianity come in in all of this? Of

course it is easy to hide. This world is not my home; I am just a-passing

through. That is not a biblical world view. Jesus talked about the kingdom ofGod coming on earth as in heaven. We have got to grapple with what thatmeans, for goodness sake. We have got to say with St Paul that Jesus is Lordso Caesar isn't. And therefore I think as Christians, my job, our job, hassomething to do with echoing and sharing the appropriate parts of the post

modern critique of empire. We have got to agree that a great deal of the oldimperial project, the Enlightenment dream, was arrogant, was self-serving,

was power hungry, was money seeking. But then Christianity, the ChristianGospel, is not simply about the doctrine of the Fall. It is about coming

through and out the other side.

Margaret Coffey: Anglican theologian and historian Tom Wright, Bishop ofDurham. Coming through post modernity and out the other side - what doesthat mean? Well, Bishop Wright wants to make it plain it doesn't mean goingback to modernism. As an historian, he says, he is grateful to modernism for

the historical questions it reminded the Church about Jesus. Life he says ismore complicated than that.

Tom Wright: Let me put it like this. I was making a speech on freedom of

speech in the House of Lords and part of the issue is, granted those Danishcartoons, granted the angry Muslim reaction, granted the fact that my

country, my government is passing new laws about new moralities, inventingnew moralities and then enforcing them as though we are living in a police

state - we do not have the freedom of speech we once did. Where are wegoing with all that for goodness sake? It is not enough to go back to

modernism and say the name of the game is tolerance. We had wars ofreligion in the 16th and 17th century so then the Enlightenment invented

tolerance and that means that I can stand on this side of the street and takemy hat off to you on that side of the street and vice versa - we don't have to

actually engage with one another. No, tolerance is a thin unsatisfying parodyof the Christian doctrine of love. And in any case is it realistic to imagine that


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we could go and knock on Osama bin Laden's door and say now come on, bea good chap, you know perfectly well that Voltaire and Rousseau and all that,

tolerance, that's what we need. I don't think he is going to listen, and thepost modern empire - the modernist empire is there is a piece of territory,we will go and colonise it and then we will run it - the post modern empiredoesn't do that. It sits in an office somewhere in Washington or Singapore or

Tokyo or wherever, presses buttons on the screen and makes things happenin other parts of the world which are politically run by somebody else but are

economically run by the powerbrokers who stand in the backgroundsomewhere. So, post modern empire is a very complicated thing clearly. But

as Christians, our calling is to come through post modernity and out theother side - into a new world for which there is no name at the moment,because the Christian Gospel is about hearing the word which says no andbelieving it and then learning how to say the word yes after that. How do we

say that word yes? It is about new creation; it isn't that God did somethingflaky for Jesus because he especially liked him, while the world rolled on the

same way. No, it's about new creation beginning in Jesus and continuing and

those who follow Jesus being its agents as well as its beneficiaries. One ofthe ways we are to do that is actually through art and music. So muchmodernism treated the arts simply as the pretty bits around the edge, butyou leave them out of the account when you get to the serious business. No,art and music, dance and poetry and all the rest, are ways of celebrating the

beauty of creation and cocking a snoot at all the signs of destruction in theworld. And also, ways of hearing the pain of the world and holding that pain

in the presence of the God who does new creation. I don't know where this isgoing, culturally, historically, socially, I have no idea, I don't have a crystal

ball. I do believe that the calling of the Church when faced with the kind oflate modern and then post modern empire that we now have is to hear the

post-modern word which says no to all the arrogance that has gone beforeand to find the way of living and painting and singing and preaching and

teaching the word that says yes. New Creation, starting now. Andrew, overto you.

Applause

Margaret Coffey: You're with ABC Radio National's Encounter, Anglican

theologian Tom Wright, on post modernity and the Christian response to

what he defines as the post modern empire.

Music Paul Honey, comp. "Two Days, Nine Lives", Artemis Sinfonia, Black

Box BBM1057

Margaret Coffey: Bishop Wright was speaking during a discussion organised

by Melbourne Anglicans about the relationship between Christianity and postmodernity: was Christianity a rival, an ally or merely a coping mechanism inthe post modern empire? Bishop Wright's argument backs Christianity as

both ally and rival to post modernity. As you'll hear, his co-panellist, AndrewMcGowan, puts more stress on Christianity and post modernity as allies. Dr


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McGowan is Director of the Theological School of Trinity College inMelbourne. Andrew McGowan.

Andrew McGowan: I want to make a claim for the validity or usefulness of

post modernism that might just inch a little bit beyond Bishop Tom's verystriking acknowledgment of the role for postmodernism as preaching the fallto modernity. I think that of the alternatives that were given to us in thetopic today - rival, ally and coping mechanism - one could say without falling

into abject post modernity that all three could be true and on the other handnone might be as well. But I actually want to sit on one for most of what I

want to say and that is the notion of Christianity and the post modern asallies.

Margaret Coffey: Andrew McGowan - who will go on to say both positive

and negative things about Christianity and the post modern as allies, andabout which he says hard thinking must be done. But first he wants to definethe terms of the discussion a little differently. That way it will be easier to

see just how readily post modernism and Christianity might be allies.

Andrew McGowan: I think I would like to use post modernism and post

modernity in slightly different ways, even though they overlap. For mypurposes I think it would be helpful to say that post modernity is the sum

total of actually existing cultural and social phenomena which lead us to thisposition of uncertainty and doubt and who knows what's true and what's up

and what's down. But post modernism, as opposed to post modernity, postmodernism I would rather reserve for as it were the collection of selfconscious intellectual practices and tendencies, the impressive list of Frenchand other thinkers that you heard in the first presentation. Post modernism

as a self conscious sort of set of tendencies doesn't have a unique singlecoherent voice. It is as much defined as you already heard by what it is a

reaction to. And yet there are some common threads and I would like tosuggest that some of the common threads may be worth our spinning a bit

more of a yarn with, as it were. One of them is of course the suspicion ofabsolute truth claims, that has already been mentioned, and the consequentsuggestion that the meaning of speech, language, discourse or a story is notinseparable from the speaker and the hearer and from their interaction.

Meaning is thus not completely stable. It depends on context. But I suggestthat there is an important distinction to draw between acknowledgment of

the instability of meaning and complete relativism. It is not the same to saythat meaning shifts in the encounter between the text and the reader as to

say for instance as some do that the reader constructs meaning completely.

Margaret Coffey: And so, Andrew McGowan says, if a Christian takes that

insight of post modernism into the relationship between the stability ofmeaning and its context and apply it to the Bible, he has discovered aseriously useful tool for thinking.

Andrew McGowan: The Bible may indeed have a place in our tradition which


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is unique and sovereign but that does not mean that biblical meaning existsin our own understanding of it in a completely stable way. The fact that our

interpretation of key texts including say Pauline texts has shifted over 2000years isn't just because Tom Wright is a better scholar than Augustine, orCalvin or Aquinas. It is partly also because the context has changed and wesee different things as a result in the different circumstances we find

ourselves. And I think that post modernism gives us some tools to actuallythink about that phenomenon in a more serious way than may have been the

case in the past.

Christians will of course want to continue to tell a particular story which Ithink we will want to claim explains all other stories. That would be one wayof putting it at least. But the suspicion that post modernism displays towardsall attempts to create a grand theory that explains everything else is perhaps

a useful ally in that process of Christian story telling. For one thing there is acertain affinity between the post modern suspicion of absolute truth claims

and the many and varied ways in which Christian theology at its best I think

insists on the provisional character of human truth claims, even about thenature of God - from the polemic against idolatry, of course not just aChristian theological theme but one which remains real in Christianity,through to the theology of the Cross. So systems and structures that claimcompleteness and order and comprehensiveness are to be viewed with

suspicion and perhaps I would like to suggest that ecclesiastical systems andtheological systems need to be subject to that critique as well. I don't think

that the Church has quite earned the right to play the Prophet to a postmodern empire, even if it has an inescapable responsibility to do so. I am not

just referring here to the paradoxical reality of the Church and its membersas both sinner and sanctified. I mean specifically that we have to ask much

more seriously how the discourses and practices of power that characterisecontemporary Christianity might be said - might be said - to pay little more

than to pay lip service to any alternative configuration of power presented inthe Cross, but simply want to be rivals as it were. And even though in a

sense I think we would agree that Christianity has something to say that isvery critical about post modernity, I am uncomfortable with the notion of

Christianity as a rival in the sense of a competing power claim over andagainst others. There must be something qualitatively different about how

Christianity understands power and understands the world other than sayingwe're right and everybody else is wrong. So I think we must take whatBishop Tom has said seriously, and what post modernism suggests, seriouslyenough to apply a hermeneutic of suspicion to the church and its practice

relative to this empire of post modernity, both in its subtle culturalmanifestations and in also its blunt political forms. We can't simply say that

the claim of the church to have a story that explains and relativises all otherstories makes us exempt from a searching examination of how we use power

in service of that story or whatever vestige of it we have left.

Margaret Coffey: On ABC Radio National you're with Encounter - and a

discussion of the relationship between Christianity and the post modern


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empire. Is Christianity a rival, an ally or a coping mechanism? Rev Dr AndrewMcGowan has so far opted for ally, but he is about to take a negative turn, to

note the way Christianity in some of its guises adopts too readily the toolsproffered by post modernism. He finds a role for Christianity as rival to thepost modern empire - an empire he locates within the Anglican Church itself.

Andrew McGowan: Now in suggesting such a critique of contemporary

Christianity I must say that I am not speaking primarily of the Christianity of

cathedrals and choirs which with all due respect to its practitioners andadvocates of whom I am one some of the time is rapidly passing in to the

place of interesting cultural undercurrent or quirky counter cultural nostalgia.The Christianity or Christianities which are emerging in the post modern

reality are often as true to the nature of the Empire as they are strident inclaiming they are not part of it. I leave reluctantly to one side the indicationsin Australia of the emergence now really and not just in our paranoidfantasies of a genuine powerful religious right that is actually impacting

voting patterns and the results of elections but I believe this is now part of

our reality. Rather I want to move on to the subtler thing about how postmodernity is as it were creating a sort of church which it can be quitecomfortable with because it is so market driven and so consumer oriented.

We are seeing almost inevitably Christianities that provide for the pre-existing and pre-conceived demands of prospective consumers rather thanthe Church which, however badly and however incompletely it understood it,sought to form members in a common set of cultural practices which is what

I believe the ancient church did. The very diversity of these Christianitieswhich are coming into existence in our own time may in some ways seem to

be their saving grace for they are so different they can't be all making thesame mistakes. So fresh expressions of church as they are now being called

are inevitably I think characteristically post modern. They are on the onehand producing creative and interesting and authentic worship and serviceand witness. They are on the other hand producing self serving andextremely crass forms of life which are going under the name of church and

that is almost of necessity for the existing needs of the consumer is whatdrives this diversity of Christian expression.

It seems to me that in Australian Anglicanism in particular this very fluid and

consumer focused approach to church growth and to fresh expressions ofchurch is often, not always, but often linked to a particularly strident anddogmatic Calvinism that maintains what are inevitably very modernsensibilities about truth. The Bible is presented as absolute although of

course interpreted in a very specific and sometimes I think quite idiosyncraticway and this defensive biblicism is linked to a startling indifference to the

concrete elements of ritual and other practice apart from a form ofconservative personal morality. One might even claim that the most dynamic

and successful churches of our time are often taking the Cross andsometimes even Tom Wright's powerful paradoxical articulation of the Cross

and then turning it into a part of the ideological content of a quest for powerdriven by numbers, by conventional notions of success, and consumer


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turnover. Is this rivalry? What I fear is that the most stridently dogmaticforms of emergent Christianity are saying exactly what the empire needs

them to say even when they are not specifically advocating the agenda of thehard Right. By claims to a certainty that wraps a kind of moral andtheological conservatism indifferently in a whole range of different culturalforms, I think this is just the kind of ideology that the empire needs or

wants. This is not nearly rival enough even where it presents itself as rival.This is indeed accidental coping mechanism. Rivalry I've said again I am not

sure is what we need. But the Church must have a distinctive account of life.The Christian answer may actually lie in a refusal to engage in rivalry - for

what would the power of the Cross be in quests for power?

Applause

Margaret Coffey: Rev Dr Andrew McGowan

Master of Ceremonies: Well thank you very much. There has been some

very stimulating and provocative material from both of our speakers and it isopen to you to ask some questions.

Margaret Coffey: The first question goes to the idea of Truth - and both the

difficulty and necessity of claiming truth.

Tom Wright: The idea of a truth which is true for me but not necessarily

true for you is actually a Western luxury. To that extent there are no post

modernists on the West Bank. If there is a line drawn in the sand and youget shot if you cross it, then however much you may say that is your truth

and this is mine you are still dead at the end of the day. That is what 9/11

was all about - actually the reassertion of one truth at the expense ofanother truth. But I mean this picks up with what Andrew was saying aboutthe way in which certain ways of doing and being church actually collude withthat deconstructive reality, that the church has tended to say this person inthis context needs to have their spirituality sorted out, they need fresh peace

and hope and joy in their life, they need comfort, whatever, so we will dowhatever is necessary to make that person feel good and then they may go

on coming to church and that will be nice too, without actually botheringabout whether there are truth claims to be made at a different level. And this

is one of the responses I wanted to make to Andrew, though I basically agreewith almost everything he has said, that the Church has got a big story to tellbut the moment when the Church tells that story as even an implicit power

story it deconstructs itself around Mark 10, 35-45 which is Jesus response toJames and John about power and so on, and instead the church has to learnpainfully to live its story as a love story not as a power story.

Margaret Coffey: Jesus' response to James and John in the Gospel of Mark

deconstructs power in the line: "..whoever wishes to become great amongyou must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must

be slave of all."
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Tom Wright: That is absolutely central to what we are about.

Andrew McGowan: It does seem to me that another sort of

characteristically post modern but not uniquely post modern move is really topose the question of the ethics of readership so to speak, that it isn't just a

matter of getting your brain clear enough and accumulating enoughknowledge to be able to interpret. But the position of the person who actswith charity is in good orthodox Christian tradition going back to Augustinecertainly at least is the authentic position of interpretation of scripture. So I

think the way in which practice actually forms part of the context for how wemight come to an authentic proclamation of Christianity even in a world

which doesn't want to listen part of the time, must be part of what a newauthenticity would involve.

Margaret Coffey: That question of authenticity keeps coming back, and

very often its directed to what the Anglican Church itself looks like on the

inside - read bluntly this is a question about Hillsong style Anglicanism.

Question: What's happening it seems to me particularly in Australia, within

the Church, is that we are being coopted into a post modern period where Ithink as you said Andrew there is a comfortable role for the church on the

sidelines. I am wondering if you could both comment on what you see assome of the options for the Church in this context because I think here in

Australia we are going to increasingly face a market driven, privatised,corporatised church, which is on about similar agendas about prosperity,

rather than about salvation.

Andrew McGowan: It seems to me that one of the fundamental questionsthat I was sort of trying to point to, if not to say in so many words, isactually whether or not we believe in the Church. And when I say I believe inthe Church I don't just mean that I believe in agreeing with other people who

agree with me and am prepared to have a degree of fellowship with them onthe basis of agreement. I believe that the Church is an actually existing

historical community which exists in a fragmented and an incomplete form,whose real identity is yet to be revealed but which actually exists and which

really matters. And I think that one of the things that we actually have to doeven as we experiment with new forms of community and network andconnecting as Christians which I think is necessary - I am not trying to poopoo that - I think we have to be ready to make a radical commitment to that

actually existing community of people. And that will be one of the thingswhich is inherently counter cultural in that emerging reality where individuals

are interchangeable, where relationships are turned into you knowcommodities, where we network rather than relate and love. So I think that

the existence of the church not in a backward looking way but with a genuinehistorical sense of where we have come from and a hope about where we aregoing is part of the answer to that question at least.


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Tom Wright: To pick up something Andrew said and partly to respond to

you: it is inevitable I think that the church chameleon like will take on some

at least of the colouring of its surroundings and that isn't a bad thing becauseunless you take an extremely dualist view you may well want to say that the

living God is present and active in different cultural movements etc. Theproblem comes as we know from much of our past and the horrible exampleof course is the 1930s which we can all knock because none of us want to bethere when the Deutsche Christians, the German Christians, said, 'Our

interpretation of history goes like this - that God has raised up Adolf Hitlerand the Nazi Party to be the means of salvation for not only Germany but a

much wider swathe of the human race.' And frankly, if you'd lived throughthe Depression in the 1920s, you might well think that. Here's the new

reality, this is it, new model humanity, we got it. And so they had this verystrong theology of we must find out what God is doing in history and do itwith him, and that led them right into the trap and it was Barth andBonhoeffer and the others who said no. And that's one of the key wrestling

points we have - that's why Niebuhr wrote that book Christ and Culture, to

map out different ways of relating and we got to keep on revisiting that mapand reapplying it to different bits of our culture. So that the Church - I agreewith Andrew - is a historical incomplete, fragmentary and yet vital entity

which is going forward whether we like it or not and the point that I wastrying to make is that there are ways of being Christian which are aboutcreating fresh forms for tomorrow in a way which could be deeply compellingand attractive to people. There's nobody else much out there trying to lead

the way through post modernity and out the other side. Some philosophersare saying that is what we need to do. I don't see too many people actually

doing it. When the Church gets its act together and actually does the lovestory - I've got some wonderful parishes in my diocese where they are doing

some extraordinary things on the street with programs for children who areeither homeless or single parents and the parents have disappeared orwhatever, teaching literacy skills and running credit unions for people whosefinances are just so appalling that you couldn't believe it - the Church is

actually doing that and that sends a signal, that creates hermeneutic spacewithin which it makes more sense to say I believe in the Father, the son and

the Holy Spirit than simply some of the very, very post modern charismaticchoruses which are all the rage at the moment. They don't realise they are

colluding with post modernity but what a lot of those songs are doing istaking little fragments of Christian piety and devotion and dropping them inas though that makes a story which it doesn't. I see it as a deeply puzzlingcultural sign. But the good news is that the Christian Gospel at its best and

with wise leadership has always been able to do new things and come upwith new poetry and new art and who would have thought in the 17th

century that a young man called Johann Sebastian Bach would emerge whowould write music that would teach half of Europe to sing about Jesus? There

may be whole new things waiting to happen and we have to pray and workfor them.

Music Bach, J.S. Cantata 147 "Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben"


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Choir of King's College, Cambridge, Academy of St Martin in the Fields, condSir David Willcocks EMI 7243 5 86052 2 8

Margaret Coffey: You're listening to Encounter on ABC Radio National - and

to the edited version of a discussion held in Melbourne about the relationshipof Christianity to post modernity. Speakers included Anglican theologian TomWright, Bishop of Durham, and Rev Dr Andrew McGowan, Director of theTrinity College Theological School in Melbourne. Here's Andrew McGowan

putting a question to Tom Wright about the place of beauty in the Christianresponse to both modernism and post-modernism.

Andrew McGowan: I was struck by your comments about beauty near the

end and I have a suspicion that we tend to think that beauty may itself be ameans to an end which is perhaps an awful thing. I wonder whether you

really think beauty has not only an inherent power but perhaps also power tochange church or people, whatever? Would you expand?

Tom Wright: Absolutely. I'm not an artist and I am not even an art historianbut I am a very keen musician and that is the angle on beauty that I amcoming from. Yes, I mean beauty can be a means to an end and I don't think

actually that is necessarily a bad thing. But I just believe that God hascreated a very, very beautiful stunning world and that if we don't celebrate

and enjoy that we are actually thumbing our nose at the Creator. And yet theparadox is that we live between Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 11 by which I mean that

the seraphim in Isaiah 6 sing Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord, the whole earth isfull of his glory. Very interesting! And Isaiah says oh no it isn't because I amlost , I have unclean lips and my people have unclean lips and we're under

judgment. So there is a tension there, and then Isaiah 11 has this wonderful

Messianic picture of the wolf lying down with the lamb and the peace andjustice, and then it says the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters cover the sea. Now that again is an image of indescribablebeauty and glory and we live in the tension of the one and the other and it

seems to me that when we appreciate beauty and when we create beautythis is not simply a means to a different end - it is part of the work of newcreation, recognising enhancing and enabling other people to recognise andappreciate and enjoy where we are between Isaiah 6 and Isaiah 11 and as

such to do some cultural leadership. I think of the poetry of the IrishmanMicheal O Siadhail. He is a wonderful poet; he is a Christian but it is not kind

of flaunted. He is one who celebrates the astonishing goodness of life in away which isn't tacky or twee. The trouble is that when it comes to aesthetics

our culture has oscillated between sentimentalism, kitsch if you like, andbrutalism if you and somehow we need to find ways of saying no there is thisthing called new creation which is like the resurrection, it is thetransformation of the old, not the abandonment of it.

Margaret Coffey: Bishop Tom Wright .. and you can find information about

the poet Micheal O Siadhail on abc.net.au together with the transcript of thisEncounter. Another question!
http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/RsvIsai.htmlhttp://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/RsvIsai.html


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Question: I'm the tail end of the baby boomers, I was born in 1964 so I'm

right on the fence of the modernist and the post modernists so I have had areally difficult time of life trying to work out what I think. Here is my

question: what can pre 64ers that are part of the institutionalised church thatmany Australians don't want to be part of what can we learn from the postmodernist approach to life so that we can embrace that and be a relevantfaith and body of people?

Margaret Coffey: Andrew McGowan's answer puts relevance on a back

burner and brings that notion of authenticity to the fore again.

Andrew McGowan: That is obviously a big question. I tend to suspect

myself that the question of relevance while understandable and indeed

necessary is probably the wrong one at least to begin with. The sort of stuffthat I read as you obviously had about the sorts of values and ways of

approaching reality which are supposed to characterise the Gen Xs and the

Gen Ys and the boomers and so forth, I think that much of that literaturesuggests that those people who come after us are more concerned withauthenticity than with relevance and what may be most relevant to them will

actually be what is most authentic, what is lived out with conviction and withopenness rather than what is cobbled together in an attempt to make things

attractive to people. I think that it is interesting when you go around forinstance let's take different churches and the ways in which they manage to

be welcoming, to engage with people and so on, right across the spectrumyou see very successful and very unsuccessful attempts at that and mysuspicion is, rightly or wrongly, that the unsuccessful ones are the placeswhere people have said the numbers are going down, we are not getting

young people in, what can we do to make it more relevant. And I suspectthat the successful ones are those who are saying Jesus has called us to be

an effective faith community with a mission and ministry in this community -we want to reach people and we want to show them who Jesus is, what are

we going to do about that. That would be my theological gut feeling aboutwhat the difference ought to be. So to start with authentic discipleship firstand foremost rather than to treat mission as really just shorthand for dealingwith our crisis about the fact that we are losing the level of influence that we

are used to having in society.

Tom Wright: I basically agree with what Andrew has said. My anxiety about

authenticity is that a lot of its mileage comes out of existentialism and the

danger with existentialism is that it can become narcissistic, that as long asI'm authentic, as long as I can satisfy myself that I am discovering who I

really am and being true to that, then that will be OK, won't it. If you live inthe Middle East for a few years you discover no, that won't do, sorry,because there are plenty of different authenticities and they are bombing andkilling one another. We have to go beyond that. What I see as the pluses

though, where we can celebrate actually, is that under high modernism wehad this terrible split between what used to be called evangelism and what


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used to be called social justice or something like that and one of the thingsmodernism has done has put all the chess pieces back on the board and say

let's not sweep half of them away, let's see how they all fit together. Andanother thing is the area of spirituality, that having grown up under highmodernism, those of us who did pray, those of us who did believe that wewere aware of the living presence of God, found it terribly embarrassing to

talk [about ]. I remember when I was at school there was no language totalk about that with my friends except language which was cringe worthy and

made people sort of look away and which they hadn't come into the room.And now today everyone wants spirituality, it is just the joke is they don't

think they are going to find it in church and sometimes sadly they are right.But the great news is that in the middle of that the Christian Church doesbelieve that an encounter, a personal encounter with the living God is a realpossibility for any man, woman or child and that we actually do have

traditions which enable us to start to explore that and enhance that.Likewise, with beauty, the aesthetic dilemma within modernism, it seems to

me though post modernity make that harder by being so eclectic as to

disengage with all the great traditions, it also opens the possibility that wecan re engage in fresh ways and think outside the box. Thank God for that.Likewise in relationships. In modernity, personal relationships were verymuch at a discount and if you were running a business in modernity youdidn't actually think too hard about - I am caricaturing - whether you were

being nice to people. I mean I do know some modernist businessmen whoreally did believe that the way to get things done was to walk down the hall

and yell at people. And I think now we have learnt that that is counterproductive and that again is something to celebrate from a Christian point of

view. But you have got to get through and out the other side, that it is notjust self serving, it is not just narcissistic, it is not just me being authentic, it

is actually engaging with the wider world.

Margaret Coffey: Now to a question that makes explicit the politics of

Christianity's relationship with post modernity. It gets a response from both

Andrew McGowan and Tom Wright.

Question: I'm the 1941 vintage. I was born in Dublin because the Germans

were bombing Belfast at the time, and I'd like to just ask you whether the

Church in one of its dimensions needs to see itself becoming a community ofresistance to empire. We have anti-terrorism laws which I gather are

modelled on British anti-terrorism laws which take away some of thefundamental I suppose modern human rights in terms of arbitrary

imprisonment, suspension of habeas corpus, taking away the presumption ofinnocence and so on. And while they might seem to be aimed at people with

dark faces and black beards who go to dodgy prayer meetings, in fact wewere really alerted when a white middle class American peace activist was

summarily arrested and thrown out of this country: it seemed to send asignal, this isn't just aimed at particular people, it is potentially aide at

anybody and any association that empire doesn't like including perhapsgroups like this, and that seems to be linked with draconian industrial


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relations laws. How do we creatively respond to this, in the light of the factthat most people don't seem to care?

Andrew McGowan: The first thing I would like to do is to add Australia's

policies and practices with regard to immigration to this. The anti-terrorismlaws are an extremely bad idea but we have been locking people up andthrowing the key away n the basis of skin colour, mental illness and variousother things for months and years now and I think it is one of the true

indications of a moral crisis in Australia to be honest. So how do we formcommunities of resistance? Another reason I chose that third example, even

though I am not sure how well we are doing, I am aware of lots of people inthe churches who really are concerned about that and who are actually doing

things about it. I had a friend visiting recently from South Australia who ispart of a parish community which isn't exactly the wild left wing of theAnglican Church or anything else but what we might call 'decent middle classpeople with solid values' who realise there is something badly wrong with

that sort of thing. Perhaps their modern assumptions gave them good

instincts for stuff like that. And I think there are actually lots of parishcommunities where people are actually forming little support groups forrefugees and migrants. Those things are what give m e hope that you know

the grass roots people do have a basic sense of well we're not sure whatwe'd do if we were Mr Howard either but we know what is wrong about that.So we are going to do something differently. We are going to make friendswith refugees and migrants, we're going to seek the local community groups

from other, you know, ethnic and for that matter religious groups whichraises of course a different set of difficulties and we are going to try and

make connections with them. I think that is happening. Perhaps we are notmaking enough of it. I wouldn't want to give them too many brownie points

but I am still happy that even some of the church leaders that I disagree withabout some of the things I have been talking about already have nonethelessmade some relatively solid statements about things like that. I think that isone of the signs of hope I want to acknowledge but I would like to see more.

Bishop Tom Wright: I agree with that. One of the signs of hope in my

country is that the so-called house churches that have long since outgrowntheir houses and now meet in cinemas and enormous great purpose built

structures, whereas 30 or 40 years ago that tradition would very really havehad very little if anything to do with issues of justice within society, in my

country I am glad to say now they are absolutely up for it and very keen tobe working with all these issues.

I don't know whether it is late modern or post modern or whatever, but this

business of oh dear there is an emergency, right we've got to suspendeverything including thousand year old things like habeas corpus and so on,

that is a very, very dangerous place to be. And how can the churches critiquethat? Before the Iraq war, there was a friend of mine, he's a parish priest in

Hackney, one of the rough areas in central east London, and he and all hisparishioners used to go around with lapel badges with a question mark, just


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a question mark and people would of course say what is that about? Andthey'd say, we are people who think we need to question whether we are

going in the right direction and we don't know that we have got the answersbut we are questioners. There are ways we can do that.

Margaret Coffey: And finally a question that takes an inevitable turn,

towards what shorthand calls the Anglican crisis - in other words, thedivisions within Anglicanism that have emerged more strongly since its

United States arm named as bishop a man who lives in a homosexualrelationship.

Question: I was just wondering how much you think the current so-called

crisis within the Anglican Communion might be reflective of differentresponses to post modernism/modernism, because to some extent maybe

you could argue that it is?

Tom Wright: Let me just say this: one of the big divides in the present

debate is not between as it were pro gay and anti gay, but between theessentialists and the constructivists, that is those who are basicallymodernist in their pro gay views who say that some people simply are - are -

homosexual and that is their essence, over against the post modernists whosay this is a construction and I chose when I get up this morning or when I

go to bed tonight to behave in a certain way and that doesn't constitute myessence because I am not an essentialist and that is where most post

modernists are. And my reading of the current debate within the gaycommunity itself is that the constructivists are winning. The trouble is a lot ofthe debate within the church is set up on the essentialist model which is whypeople talk about justice and human rights and so on which only actually

makes any sense if you take and essentialist viewpoint - so that the modern,post modern shift within the gay community itself means that it is very hard

to know when you are having a debate where you are standing. And franklywhen you try, with all that muddle, to have any sort of sensible discussion in

any kind synod, oh my goodness, it is a nightmare.

One of the other things is you know this notion of human rights is essentiallya modernist construct. It comes to us from the Enlightenment and it has

been hugely useful, like tolerance itself, in many contexts and for manypurposes. The trouble is when you then take it and apply it in areas which it

was never intended to be applied - well by its original framers - anyone canappeal to their human rights because within post modernity the only moral

high ground that is left is that I am a bigger victim than you. All other moralbets are off and it's the unseemly scramble for the moral high ground ofvictim hood. That is a rotten way to have a Christian ethical discussion.Having said all that, just to get back to the substantive question, where we

are in the Anglican Communion is in a new situation - it is not just that wehave another fight about another issue. We have to think now at the meta

level, not about the gay issue but about how we do church, what this word

koinonia, communion, what it actually means. We have not been this way


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before.

Margaret Coffey: Bishop Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and one of

Anglicanism's best known contemporary theologians. He was joined by Rev

Dr Andrew McGowan in a discussion with Melbourne Anglicans about thenature of the relationship between Christianity and post modernity. You canfind the transcript of this program by going to abc.net.au/religion andlocating Encounter and you'll also find there a range of links and information

about the speakers.

And since this Encounter is by way of acknowledgement of the death in earlyJune of the American philosopher Richard Rorty let me quote him: My sense

of the holy," wrote Rorty, "insofar as I have one, is bound up with the hopethat someday, any millennium now, my remote descendants will live in aglobal civilization in which love is pretty much the only law." In this society,said Rorty, communication would be domination-free, class and caste would

be unknown, hierarchy would be a matter of temporary pragmatic

convenience, and power would be entirely at the disposal of the freeagreement of a literate and well-educated electorate." An unholypragmatist's sense of communion perhaps.

Technical production by Richard Girvan. I'm Margaret Coffey.

PARTICIPANTS

Rev Dr Andrew McGowanhttp://www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/theological_school/about/staffThe Bishop of Durham, Dr N. T. Wright http://www.ntwrightpage.com/

MUSIC

Paul Honey, comp. "Two Days, Nine Lives", Artemis Sinfonia, Black BoxBBM1057James Macmillan, comp. "Mass", Westminster Cathedral Choir, Andrew Reid,

organ, Martin Baker, Master of Music. Hyperion CDA67219

REFERENCES

Micheal O Siadhail Globe(Bloodaxe Books, Tarset 2007)

http://www.osiadhail.com/commentary.html

Richard Rorty http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty

http://www.crosscurrents.org/hollandwinter2004.htm"The Coming Only Is Sacred - Self-Creation and Social Solidarity in RichardRorty's Secular Eschatology" by Scott Holland

Producer

Margaret Coffey
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Documents

The Christian Postmodernity