- Oops. That was intended as a reply for Danutz, not you Peter. Must have clicked the wrong link.

 I find little to disagree with in what you have to say. I would certainly count myself as an advocate of the faith which you express. It seems, as you say, that we have had similar journeys.

 I very much like what your description of post-modernity. As you say, I find it hard to see it existing independently of modernity. It seems, rather than the next evolutionary phase in man’s way of thinking, to describe a small group of moderns who have turned their gaze inward, and begun to critique the worldview of the era in which they live.

 I am not sure if post-modernity is understood to be a wide phenomenon or not. It seems to me to be representative of the select few, rather than the majority. The best-selling book in the religion section at the WHSmith near me at the moment is Dawkins’ The God Delusion; a firmly modern book with no sense of post-modern introspection at all! A recent study; The Worldview of Generation Y, tells us that young people are not interested in anything beyond the immediate - they are contented with their xbox360s and iPods (I say this as a xbox360 and iPod-owning member of said generation); again, there is no sense of critique or challenge. The vast majority of the western world, it appears, is happy with its modern mindset. It is only a handful of insightful people (in which I include those involved in the emergent discussion) who seem to be challenging modernity, albeit from within.

 Could perhaps the Emergent movement be to church what the koan is to short-stories? Or what Artaud was to theatre? Perhaps its role, based on this take on post-modernity is not to meet a need already expressed, but to present people with something so new, so different, so bizarre, that it overloads their current way of thinking, forcing them into something new. Perhaps we need the emergent church not to answer the questions that people are asking, but rather to give them something to ask questions about! In which case, perhaps Pete Rollins’ spectacle at Greenbelt last summer was a noble one after all… :-p

 I don’t know, my fingers are working faster than my mind is, but that seems to me to be a worthwhile movement. Something that aims to be radical, to be surprising, in order to shake people up, and encourage them to begin to think and critique things for themselves. In shutting off the flawless systematic theology mechanism, perhaps it might even create a shocked silence into which God could speak…

 That seems like something I’d want to be a part of. What do you think? Does any of that make sense, or is it just the senseless babblings of a self-important 22 year old?