Mediation, and Spirituality in the Postmodern Context

JoshvaSession 8

Main themes

• Worship • Spirituality • Image, Intimacy and Global Awareness• Implicit Religion

Resources • Peter Stephenson Christian Mission in the Postmodern World,

Some Introductory Thoughts. 2001 http://www.postmission.com/articles/pomisgen.pdf

• RANDY ROWLAND AND SALLY MORGENTHALER, A MISSIONAL INCARNATION OF CHRISTIAN WORSHIP IN POSTMODERNITY. http://ekhardt.com/fresno.dome/pm723paper.pdf

• Roger Lundin The Culture of Interpretation: Christian Faith and the Postmodern World. 1993.

• James W. Fowler, Faithful Change: The Personal and Public Challenges of Postmodern Life. 1997

• Rowan Williams Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement. Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000.

• Ursula King (Editor) Faith and Praxis in a Postmodern Age. 1998• Don Cupitt Mysticism After Modernity. Oxford: Blackwell 1998.

Spirituality in a Postmodern Age

• Faith and Praxis in a postmodern age by Ursula King pp.98-112

• Spirituality represents the move of phenomenological studies of religion into a new key stressing subjectivities and experience as over against dispassionate objectivity, the soul rather than the form of religion. Spirituality is a hidden dimension in a largely materialistic world

spirituality

• Modernity and loss of spirituality or private mode of religious expression

• Spiritualitas – celebration of the Christian mysteries particularly eucharist

• Spirituality is described as an attempt to grow in sensitivity, to self, to others, to non-human creation and to God, or as an exploration into what is involved in becoming human (U King)

Postmodern Spirituality • Dialectic between the spirit within us and the

spirit beyond us – Ultimate Reality by reimaging and renaming

• Samuel Rayan – three models of spirituality 1. distributive spirituality where some follow a spiritual life while others do not 2. alternative model where the same persons alternative their activities between spiritual practices and other engagements 3. Interpenetrative model where we all are spiritually engaged in all our actions so that actions and contemplation are integrally connected.

Mystic Spirituality

• Mysticism after Modernity, Don Cupitt• Internalising God within the self• Dissolving oneself into God• Spiritual marriage• Mystics play games with language and are

aware of the enemies who tend to seize upon a careless word

Postmodern Mission through worship, spiritual encounter and implicit

experiences• Peter Stephenson’s article• A Suspicion of all Big stories – Response

– Come clean with the church’s past (Ian Paisley evangelical? Adams liberationist?)

- Examine ourselves for oppressive tendencies (respecting rights of all?)

- Search ourselves for signs of syncretism (uncritical of new technologies?)

Christian Mission

• Distrust of Authority and institutions - Live for Today (too materialistic – having

life and having it to the full)• Global awareness – ecological

destruction; human rights, destruction of ethnic cultures, racial and religious intolerance; sexual discrimination, abuse of animals

• Longing for intimacy

Mclaren

• Brian McLaren in The Church on the Other Side said, .If you have a new world, you need a new church. You have a new world..32 If we desire to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, we must become an incarnation of the body of Christ engaging our postmodern culture.

Postmodern Values and Worship

• Experience - Postmodern worship gatherings are holistic experiences.

• Participation - A worship participant in an emerging worship gathering can expect opportunities to participate personally in the experience, whether that be in dialogue, or movement around the room to stations of activity, or moments of quiet for personal meditation.

• Dan Kimball, Emerging Worship: Creating New Worship Gatherings for Emerging Generations (El Cajon, CAGrand Rapids, MI: EmergentYS;Zondervan, 2004),

Postmodern Values and Worship contd..

• Image Richness - These gatherings make use of imagery in a way not valued by modern churches. Art is often used as means of expression, rather than an illustration. Art is used as a doorway to understanding scripture.

• Connectedness – Kimball promotes a house church structure, in which most worship gatherings would be smaller intimate events. Monthly, all of the churches would gather for larger worship experiences.

• Holistic Approach to Scripture - Kimball describes preaching as an invitation to take part in the story of scripture. There is a renewed appreciation for mystery. Sermons are more likely to provoke thought and leave questions than provide simplified answers.

• Organic Organization - Emerging worship gatherings, while ordered and planned, tend not to follow a rigid, linear, predictable formula. A sermon, for instance, may come in separate pieces interwoven with other interactions with scripture in any particular gather time.

Postmodern construction of Spirituality

• Temporary Communal Allegiances• People still seek community but with minimal

hindrances to commitment beyond one's comfort zones. The notion of voluntary association has become dominant with increased mobility and the emergence of multiple and overlapping communal allegiances.

• Communal allegiances in the postmodernist perspective offer liberation from constraint enabling a new impetus to explore diverse religious expressions and worldviews. This works simultaneously at global and local levels

• http://www.vcce.org.au/pdfs/indic_pomo_paper.pdf

Consumer Identity• Postmodern religious construction occurs in a

consumer context because capitalism has provided the buying power, which underpins the availability of diversity and difference. Consumerism entered the picture when it became easy to "shop".

• What has taken place is a process where religious commitment has been supplanted by consumption nurturing a person's spirituality. The deregulation of religion has mutated into a range of spirituality resources. Religion has become both a container for cultural conservation and a source of radical change. The realm of choice has opened up tremendously for most people in the affluent societies, giving unprecedented opportunities to chose lifestyles and beliefs from a range of options.

Human Interest Story• Spirituality can be seen as an aspect of the

autonomous subject where religious expression becomes increasingly the product of individual biographies, patterned after similar human interest stories. Tracing individual paths of biographical identity construction is done by studying the actual practices that are adopted to make sense of life. Needless to say, autonomous spiritual subjects, who construct their own religious identity through peculiar patters of practices not only create new questions for social analysis, but also for ongoing religious activity.