It is not a foregone conclusion that Reed Dunn, pastor of Christ the King Presbyterian Church in Joplin (USA) has successfully resisted the siren call of the Emergent Pomo Church. His words are just a little too relativist. It passes for politeness these days.
He may still believe in that embarrassingly absolute Biblical truth and - possibly - an objective account of Christianity. Who's to say? His narrative is too woolly to be certain, yet he explains very well in lay terms what the deliberately obfuscated approach to the faith, as revealed by the early Emerging Church Fathers actually is: a subjective story in which everyone reads whatever works for him. The result is so-called 'narrative' (browse this file for a crash course in Pomo lingo).
For a feel of what we are up against note that in the pomo version of truth, science is a so-called Western 'meta narrative.' Nothing objective there of course ... but then, objectivity itself is also but a Western meta narrative. Confused? You won't be, after exegesis by the pastor of Joplin.
Evangelicals are frequently categorized by skeptics as postmodernists on account of their emphasis on revelation rather than official doctrine. The dishy Dunn sheds light:
"(...) one of the most confusing things for evangelicals to grasp is how he (Jeremiah Wright) draws such wild conclusions from the same Bible we study every week. How does Wright take something like the crucifixion of Christ and say that it is about the oppression African-Americans have experienced here in America? Certainly the Bible applies to all of our lives, but how can he make a jump that seems so illogical?" ... ah, the blessings of postmodernism ...
Skeptics are on a mission of their own. These dogmatic materialists can frequently be found in the company of Leftists and postmodernists. Among the emotionally incontinent Platonists they find themselves in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, and they know not why!
Under the false dichotomy of faith versus ratio skeptics claim to be the absolute and sole custodians of reason. But after the pre-Renaissance catharsis led by the Aristotelian Scholastic Thomas of Aquinas, Catholics have shed the irrational self-image. What's good for Catholics, is good for evangelicals too! The pastor: "Modern evangelicals are deeply impacted by the Enlightenment. That means that evangelicals place primary importance on the original meaning of the text — whatever it meant to St. Paul is what it should mean to us today."
At this point he spills the beans. "And before you throw too many stones at Wright’s postmodern methods, you should know that most of mainstream Christianity is up to its eyeballs in it. Whether it is the Emergent Church, the Purpose Driven Life, or the Contemporary Church Movement, almost all of us are trying to make our story the central theme of the Bible in some way or another."
Which is why only evangelism, Roman Catholicism and the Eastern Churches may survive the Pomo onslaught. Laugh what you will at their moonbatting: in respect of Operation Western Deconstruct they've been exceedingly successful in relatively no time.
Update:
Here's a suggestion for Americans ...
- Filed on Articles in "Postmodernism" and "Christendom Resisting Emergence" -
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