2011/08/15

excessively postmodern?

I'm in Australia on holidays again, and as with last year, confronted by some of the presentations surrounding Aboriginal culture.

In Kakadu National park, Official notices on signs side-by-side (or, in some cases, even on a single sign) report both details of the billion-year-old rocks, and the news that the land was created in the dream time by the rainbow serpent.  Not 'Aboriginal people believe that...', but 'it was'.  These narratives are not entirely compatible. Well, that is to say, they are not compatible within our dominant system of epistemology. To ditch that system for this reason is something of a bold move, because it is rather a successful one. (We'll return to success in a moment).

To select those two narratives, and omit, say, 'creation science'  or 'flood geology' seems a little arbitrary - not that I am uncomfortable with their omission, since they do not strike me as useful descriptions. One's own perspective is of course subjective: how is the National Parks Authority to select narratives, stories, and explanations? Do you privilege the Aboriginal perspective due to its longevity? Due to the sensibilities of the 'traditional owners' (a phrase itself laden with competing meanings)? Due to the expectations of the readers? Due to the long standing oppression and disadvantage of the Aboriginal people - to allow a voice that was for a long time denied?

Privileging the voices of the marginalized sounds like a good thing to do. But I can't help wondering if, applied naively, doing so is eventually self-defeating: you'd want to ask how those people became marginalized in the first place.  The more successful voice/culture tends to overwhelm the less successful one, it was ever thus.  In many walks of life, we would be in a parlous state if not.    Perhaps that is an equally naive appeal to a kind of cultural survival of the fittest.

Success tends to be measured in terms of money, sex, and power.  Perhaps it would be better if it were not.  Instead, we might appeal to justice for the poor, living in harmony with the environment, self-giving, and a heap of other values that we tend to recognize as good humanistic qualities.  Indeed, we might see those as biblical values, as Christ-like characteristics.

But does that really work?  Would justice for the poor be best served by giving equal balance to the voices of the homeopath as to the voice of the scientific medical community?  Will our emissions of CO2 be reduced by giving weight both to those who don't understand physics and chemistry, as well as to those who do?   For the way that we understand the last 500 years of science, with all its very tangible benefits to the quality of life for all (all? most? some?) is very deeply rooted in a privileged narrative, with a value system of very definite 'right' and 'wrong', and based upon a culture which very often promotes those with sharpest elbows.   Can we truly turn our backs on that - or embrace an epistemic humility - without losing its benefits?  I guess it's a matter of scale.

I want to inhabit a world - and a system of knowing - where we give proportionate weight to every voice.   But who decides what's proportionate?


2011/08/14

review: Church in the present tense

Church in the present tense: A candid look at what is emerging
Scot McKnight, Peter Rollins, Kevin Corcoran, Jason Clark

My rule these days is that I buy hard copy books if I expect to enjoy them and lend them to others, and Kindle books if no lending is anticipated. I bought Church in the Present Tense in hard copy.  But I'm not sure I will be lending it to many others.

In terms of disappointment, this book most puts me in mind of D A Carson's book on the Emerging Church, but the comparison is hardly fair.  Carson seemingly spoke from a position of little real engagement: these authors are clearly active participants in what is emerging. And yet, because each really only speaks from a narrow personal perspective, the picture is still patchy, and didn't seem to me to amount to a candid look at all.  Perhaps I just expected the wrong thing,

The book consists of eight chapters, with each author contributing two. Corcoran is the editor and writes first, about philosophical realism. This is a curious wander through Postmodernism, epistemic humility, and a heap of related topics: I felt as if I was receiving lots of polemic from Corcoran and understanding his own belief system - but it did little to persuade me to adopt it for myself.  The second essay in the 'philosophy' section is by Rollins: surely he is writing about his favourote topic.  I'm not sure that excuses a line discussing "Heidegger's somewhat Kierkegaardian reading of Nietzsche ...", but over-all the is Rollins at his more readable.

The successive parts take us through Theology, Worship, and Bible and Doctrine.  Each takes us on a tour of the author's perspective, which is interesting,but doesn't really pretend to be representative or typical of the emerging churches they invoke (patchily). McKnight's chapter on scripture in the emerging movement put me very much in mind of McLaren's distinction of bible as constitution versus bible as library. But I fear the latter made the point more clearly. Under worship, Rollins writes on Transformance Art, reprising some of the parable-based stuff from his recent Orthodox Heretic.  He also offers the helpful observation "It is not difficult to avoid hipocrisy when you believe in nothing."

The book comes with a DVD - another reason to but the hard copy - but no reference is made to it in the pages of the book, and as I write this I haven't had opportunity ot view it.

Overall, this must be said to be a book at the 'academic' end of the 'popular' spectrum.  It's well constructed, but I cannot really describe it as instructive. It's a bit disappointing; it feels like a lost opportunity .