A modest proposal to enter into a process of Re-formation:
Over the past decade, numerous socio-religion studies have shown a dramatic change in the landscape of religious faith and its expression in the United States.[1] Above and beyond generally normal generational changes and changes as a result of human events, there has developed over the past several decades a fundamental shift in the perceptional understanding of our world and ourselves in the world. The move from a “Modern(ist)” understanding of the world and our place in it coming out of the Enlightenment endeavor of “Descartes’ doubt” and the “Cartesian dream of absolute certainty”[2] into the “Postmodern(ist)” understanding that is now the foundational perceptional understanding of Generations X and Y and following. This move is causing growing conflicts within Western Christianity through dramatic shifts in the way the Church and Christianity are understood and experienced within current culture. The “Emergent Conversation” has been instrumental in delving into the significance of Postmodernity to the Church and experimenting with changes in how “church” is done and conceived. In addition, the theological concepts held up by “Radical Orthodoxy,”[3] a theological work to place the Church and Postmodernity in alignment, have laid a new foundation for the Christian endeavor in a changing world.
How do we do “church” and live the Christian Life[4] and how do we become the Imago Dei in these new contexts are the questions asked and is the milieu (mêlée) into which we dive. Within the developing reality of our Post-Christian and Postmodern culture and as our Church is always in the midst of reformation, there is the need for transitional forms of community as the changes currently underway come to fruition. We can foresee what the future holds, and we wish to be in the conversation and in the development of ministry in a changing Christian reality far different than the experiences of the past few generations.
It is our contention that the Christian Tradition[5] as experienced in historical, non-reactionary Anglicanism[6] is primed to take advantage of these shifts. This includes the changing attitudes and longings of younger generations now being realized in a shift in their ascetical sensibilities toward traditional (more ancient and time-honed) forms of liturgy, sacramental expression, architecture, language, music, means of formation, and the search for integrity among the members of the Church. Regarding this last point of integrity, they seek people whose lives honestly reflect the image of God and not just our present cultural norms, conservative or liberal. It is our hope that in the conversing and in the doing we will find again the means to pass on to new generations the living Tradition.
To an increasingly “un-churched” and disinterested population (albeit increasingly lonely and directionless), the way we make known the saving grace of Jesus Christ will not be the same as it has been over the last century. The center of Christian witness will need to rediscover the pre-Constantinian notions that people are drawn to Christ by way of what they see in the lives of Christians. A process of re-formation[7] out of those learned aspects of the present culture that work contrary to the will of God and into the Life in Christ[8] is becoming increasingly necessary.
Footnotes:
1. See as examples: Barna Research Group’s study reported in “unChristian;” Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life report, “U.S. Religious Landscape Survey;” LifeWays study on Church Architecture; The Church and Post-Modern Culture Series – http://churchandpomo.typepad.com/; Hartford Institute for Religious Research report on Megachurch Research.
2. James A. Smith, Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church, [Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2006, 116-125]
3. Radical Orthodoxy is a postmodern Christian theological movement founded by John Milbank that takes its name from the title of a collection of essays published by Routledge in 1999: Radical Orthodoxy, A New Theology, edited by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward. The name ‘radical orthodoxy’ was chosen in opposition to certain strands of so-called radical theology. Such forms of radical theology asserted a highly liberal version of Christian faith where certain doctrines, such as the incarnation of God in Christ and the Trinity, were denied in an attempt to respond to modernity. In contrast to this, radical orthodoxy attempted to show how the orthodox interpretation of the Christian faith expressed primarily in the ecumenical creeds was in fact the more radical response to contemporary issues, and both rigorous and intellectually sustainable. (See entry at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_Orthodoxy)
4. The “life transforming” that results from intentionally interring into the process of Christian formation and discipleship within the World, but not of it.
5. Those aspects of the Christian faith that have withstood the test and trail of place and time for over 2,000+ years and within a mired of cultures, yet remain with us.
6. Our current Episcopal/Anglican troubles might best be described as a war between reactionary “conservatives” and reactionary “liberals” both coming out of Modernist sensibilities and often reacting to the Postmodernist challenge.
7. This is an intentional process where we identify cultural norms accepted by most people that work contrary to the Christian Life, resulting in a mal-formed understanding of who and what we are with regard to God’s design, then to intentionally inter into the time-consistent (ancient) Christian Disciplines so to be re-formed into the image of God through Jesus Christ (otherwise known as Catechesis in new contexts).
8. This kind of experiential and demonstrable life is distinguished from the life caught up within the Systems of the World