Global Christianity and (post)modernity

May 5, 2011 at 6:01 am

Last week, I wrote a post discussing the southward shift in Christianity, also referred to as the rise of Global Christianity.  Since I talk a lot about modernity, postmodernity, and whatnot in this blog, an obvious question might be how the rise of Global Christianity relates to these historical eras.  The class I’ve been TAing this semester has been structured around the theme of modernity, so since this post and the last have come out of a lecture for that class, I have an answer to that question.

At first blush, it might seem like Global Christianity, being primarily a non-Western phenomenon, and (post)modernity, being primarily a Western phenomenon, might not have a lot to do with each other, but I think there are at least two ways to connect them.  I would like to suggest that both can be tied to the trends of globalization and pluralism.

One way of answering how World Christianity fits into a narrative of modernity is to talk about the relationship between World Christianity and globalization, assuming that globalization is an outgrowth or full flowering of modernity or (as I would probably argue) an important part of the context of postmodernity.

Christian mission has a long history as both a form of globalization and as a force that’s been tied to other forms of globalization.  In fact, that’s what I’m writing my dissertation about.  Religion has long been something that’s bound people together across the globe.  In addition, there have been close (though complicated) connections between Christian missions and other globalizing forces, like commerce and colonialism.

But where I think Christianity and especially World Christianity ties best into globalization is that it reflects the same global/local (or glocal) nature one sees in secular forms of globalization.  Christianity is at the same time a pre-eminently global religion and a pre-eminently local religion.  It is global by virtue of the catholicity of the faith.  It is local by the propensity of the faith to adapt itself to local cultures (a process called inculturation).

Furthermore, scholars have argued that conversion from traditional religions to Christianity is a means of establishing new, stable, global connections in a world where destabilizing global connections are threatening traditional ways of life.  Yet at the same time, Christianity can be a way of preserving (though at the same time changing or reinterpreting) elements of traditional ways of life, from language to ethnicity to cultural habits to social structures.

So there’s a dialectic between Christianity as a global religion and Christianity as a local religion, where there are tensions between the two, but in which the two feed into each other – Christianity’s global connections are often what generate local appeal, but without the ability to adapt locally, Christianity wouldn’t grow globally.

Another way is to tie the story of World Christianity into (post)modernity is to talk about World Christianity as another form of pluralism or diversity which undercuts the sorts of grand narratives that modernity wants to construct and thus fits with the postmodern world.  Here, I’m using pluralism not as a value to be promoted, but rather as a term describing the diversity of the world around us.  Often, pluralism causes tension and conflict, and I think the question of how to live in a pluralistic setting is one of the most pressing questions of postmodernity/what comes next.

World Christianity reflects the pluralism of our world in several ways.  First, when examining World Christianity, you find a lot of pluralism within Christianity.  There is denominational pluralism.  Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Independents, Orthodox, and Protestants think, believe, worship, and practice differently.  There is an abundance of cultural pluralism within World Christianity.  This cultural pluralism within Christianity can lead to misunderstanding and conflict, both within and between cultures.  There are theological differences, differences in worship, differences is ecclesiology, etc.  In particular, there are differences in theologies and in access to resources between Western and non-Western Christianity.

World Christianity also reflects pluralism between religions.  Christians outside the West often live in situations where they share societies with a significant number of non-Christians and in many instances (especially in Asia) are minority populations in predominantly non-Christian contexts.  This raises the question for Christians of how one reacts theologically, ethically, politically, etc. to people from other faiths, especially other world religions such as Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.  How should Christians deal with certain eastern religious settings were religion is additive rather than exclusive, and Jesus can be another god in the pantheon?  How should Christians deal with violence or political restrictions imposed on them by other religious groups?

This question of political restrictions raises another form in which World Christianity reflects the postmodern problem of pluralism.  Many nation-state governments see pluralism as a problem and seek to repress ethnic or religious diversity out of fear that it will destabilize the state.  Brian Grim recently released a study saying that 70% of the world’s population lives in countries with high or very high levels of political or social restrictions on religion.  Not only are Christians persecuted for being Christians, they are also in many places persecuted for being ethnic minorities, like the Karen in Myanmar.

Interestingly, both of these connections between World Christianity and (post)modernity also tie in to the theme of the contextualization of Christianity – of recognizing that theology is developed from within social and cultural contexts.  When people talk about contextuality, they are also often seeking to promote the development of indigenous theologies from within non-Western contexts.  But contextuality isn’t only non-Western.  We in the West have a context, too, and connecting Christianity and that context is part of why I blog.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

The southward shift in Christianity

April 27, 2011 at 2:14 pm

I gave a lecture yesterday in the class for which I’m a teaching assistant on the southern shift of Christianity.  I’m now mining that for two blog posts – this one describing the shift southward and another soon to come one on how that relates to modernity and postmodernity.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the southern shift of Christianity, it refers to the transformation of Christianity from a primarily European religion at the beginning of the 20th century to a truly global religion today, with large numbers of adherents in not just Europe and North America, but Latin America, Africa, and Asia as well.  This transformation is also referred to as the rise of Global Christianity or World Christianity.  It’s part of what I study in school.  Really, I should just refer you to the article by my advisor, Dana Robert, entitled “Shifting Southward: Global Christianity since 1945” or Philip Jenkins’ The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.  But neither of those is available in blog form, so I’m writing this post.

At its most basic level, this shift southward is a demographic transformation.  In 1900, two thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe.  Today, less than a quarter do.  Currently, the majority of the world’s Christians live in South America, Africa, and Asia, areas referred to variously as “non-Western,” “the (global) South,” “the Two-Thirds World,” or “the Majority World.”  That’s a significant change.

Christian growth in the global South has come from two main sources: conversion of peoples from other religions and high population growth rates among Christians (and non-Christians) in the Global South.  Both of these trends should continue, ensuring that the numerical dominance of southern Christianity will only increase in this century.  At the same time as the number of Christians in the South has been increasing because of conversions and reproduction, the number of Christians in the North has stayed stable or declined as people have become secularized or had fewer babies.

Although this transformation is usually talked about using the language of World Christianity inclusive of Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania, demographically, it is largely an African story.  In 1900, less than 10% of Africans were Christian.  Today, over half are.  The African population has also grown significantly.  The percentage of Christians in the Asian population has grown, too, as has the overall Asian population, but the change in number of Christians is most dramatic in Africa.

Part of the shift southward, though, is not just demographic but a shift southward (and eastward) in thinking.  This is where Latin America and Asia become more important.  Latin America has been largely Christian for a long time, but people are now paying more attention to the unique flavor of Christianity in Latin America.  Asia has neither the dramatic demographic switches of Africa nor the long history of Christianity in Latin America, but still manages to make up a decent percentage of the world’s Christians and is home to some of the places where Christianity is growing fastest, like China.  So people’s thinking has shifted to think about Christianity as an Asian religion, too.

At the same time there’s been a demographic shift and a shift in thinking as part of the southern shift, there’s also been a shift in the makeup of Christianity.  While the traditional image of Christianity in non-Western countries is that of missionaries firmly in control of churches containing those few natives who have been willing to turn their backs on their communities and cultures and “become white”, that is no longer the case.

First, the relationship between Christianity and culture is much more complex.  Christianity certainly changes local cultures and rejects certain elements of local cultures, but it also gives new life to other elements of local cultures.  In terms of language alone (Protestant) Christian missions have been perhaps the greatest force for the preservation of indigenous languages in the world because of their practice of Bible translation.  Scholars talk about the process of inculturation as Christianity adapts to new cultures.  Thus, there’s been a cultural shift in Christianity.

In addition, missionaries are, by-and-large, no longer in control on non-Western churches.  Even where missionaries are still present, they’re often not leading local churches, but rather teaching or filling other supportive roles.  Most Christian churches around the world are led by leaders local to where the church is.  In some cases, that manifests itself as local control of local branches of an international religious body (like the United Methodist Church), but often it includes locally-formed religious bodies, which then may expand and become international missionary bodies themselves (e.g., Redeemed Christian Church of God from Nigeria, Universal Church of the Kingdom of God from Brazil, Zimbabwe Assemblies of God Africa [ZAOGA], from Zimbabwe).

The rise of independent denominations and churches is just one aspect of the denominational shift that has gone along with the southern shift of Christianity.  The biggest winners in the shift south have been Catholicism, independent churches, Pentecostalism (which overlaps with independent churches), and Evangelicalism (which overlaps with the last two).  Traditional mainline Protestantism has not benefitted nearly as much from the expansion.  More Christians are now part of Independent churches (African, Asian, and other) than are part of Protestant churches (427 million to 376 million).  Catholicism is still the largest branch of Christianity (with about 1.1 billion followers, about half the Christians in the world).

Along with these changes in denominations go changes in theology, worship style, etc.  In general, theology is more conservative and worship style more charismatic.  Theology and worship around the world also draw on cultural elements that are foreign to those in the West.  The role of ancestors in Christianity, whether indigenous music can be used in worship, exorcising demons, ecstatic worship experiences, and questions of ritual power and purity are all concerns that aren’t very important in the West but are very important in other areas of the globe.

There’s a lot more one could say about this topic, but I think I’m going to wrap up the post here.  Look for the follow-up in a few days: how these shifts relate to (post)modernity.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (2)

Is the Internet better for Christ or for cats?

April 22, 2011 at 12:17 pm

While the title of this blog post may seem flippant, I do mean it to raise serious questions about how well Christians are using new modes of communication.  Also, please don’t hate me for posting seemingly flippant things on Good Friday.  I hope all Christian readers of this blog have a solemn and meaningful end to their Holy Week before the joy of Easter.

Here’s what lies behind this question:  In the Reformation, Christians (mostly Protestants initially, but eventually Catholics, too) made very good use of a powerful new tool for communication: the printing press.  Something like 20% of books printed in Germany in the middle of the 16th century were written by Martin Luther.  Very few, if any of them, were picture books of cats (a phenomenon that would only emerge much later).  See Mark Edwards’ book Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther for a great example of an argument about how important printing was to the success of the Reformation.

I wonder, though, if the Internet as another powerful new tool for communication is feeding any Christian movements as significant as the Reformation.  Certainly, some Christians have made good use of the Internet.  I think Christians have taken especially well to podcasts and blogs (hence this blog), and I know Rob Bell and others do good things with video.  But Christianity and Christians seem not to have generated a lot of what has really caught on around the interwebs.  Jesus has yet to go viral.  And a lot of ways that Christians have tried to use the Internet have failed or just seemed hokey.  And successful or unsuccessful, a lot of Christian uses of the Internet have served to perpetuate a Christian subculture rather than to disseminate the message of Jesus to the wider culture (think Godtube).

Cats, on the other hand, have really benefitted from the Internet.  A decade or so ago, cats were mostly pets.  Sure, you had some cats which were also cartoons and therefore cultural icons, but cats weren’t driving the culture.  Then came the Internet.  Pictures of cute cats (along with cute puppies and cute babies) took up a significant portion of early bandwidth.  But more importantly, cats went viral in other ways.  Lolcats not only became cultural icons, they’ve influenced spelling, grammar, and language (lolcat WIN!).  Maru, keyboard cat, and other Youtube celebrities have racked up huge numbers of views.  Cats have become central to a number of cultural memes.  Indeed, there are ten times as many memes for cats on knowyourmeme.com as there are for Jesus and Christ put together.  Furthermore, a lot of the Jesus memes are things like raptor Jesus, which aren’t exactly promoting a Christian message.  (Though conversely, one could argue things like the lolcat Bible are.)

Thus, it seems to me that cats have benefitted much more from the Internet than Christ, whereas Christ definitely benefitted more from the printing press than cats.  Why is this?  Four possible reasons spring to my mind.  The first two I don’t think should trouble Christians that much.  The second two should.

The first reason is the breadth of the medium for printing and the Internet.  Maybe 10% of Europe was literate at the invention of the printing press.  It tended to be the 10% who was most educated and thus most potentially interested in debating theology.  Of course, a lot of what sold of Luther’s was more low-brow, and those who were literate read Luther’s (and others’ works) to those who weren’t literate, but printing was itself a form of narrowcasting.  The Internet, on the other hand, is limited only by issues of access and rarely by issues of ability.  If you’ve got a router, you can be looking at Youtube videos.  Thus, the Internet appeals to a much wider slice of the population, and if you assume that only a more-or-less fixed percentage of the human population is going to be initially interested in talking about religion, then that percentage is going to make up a smaller portion of those on the Internet than it did those reading books and pamphlets in the Reformation.

The second reason has to do with the nature of communication and memes on the Internet vs. in print.  While print can certainly be used to produce short, pithy things, books and even pamphlets are really designed to convey arguments, explanations, etc.  The depth of the medium is conducive to conveying more substantial messages, such as the sorts of religious messages Christians want to promote.  The Internet, and especially Internet memes, operate via pictures, short videos, and short bits of writing.  These means can convey very powerful messages, but they’re not as well-elaborated or well-controlled by the image/text producers as are the messages in books.  Hence, the Internet may be better for cats than Christ because it’s easier to convey (non-) substantive things about cats through the medium than it is to convey substantive things about Christ.

The third reason is that Christians might just not be as good at using the Internet as they were at using the printing press.  Please note that I am not saying there aren’t Christians who use the Internet well.  Obviously there are.  But as a whole, have Christians embraced the Internet as a means for promoting Jesus in the same way they embraced the printing press?  I’m not sure.

The fourth reason goes back to a comment above about Christians using the Internet mainly to reinforce Christian subculture rather than influence the culture.  The way in which different subgroups of the culture interact in the postmodern world may be different from the way it was in the Reformation.  Cats may be easier to share across subcultures than Christ, probably because they are less religiously, politically, and in other ways fraught.  The ease of sharing non-substantive bits of culture is probably not something new, but it should challenge Christians to think about how to share Christ effectively.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Periodizing the History of Christianity and Methodological Pluralism

April 13, 2011 at 9:20 am

I’m a historian of Christianity.  One of the things historians like to do is divide history into periods.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve probably gotten a sense of the periodization of history I’ve been using, but I thought I’d summarize it here and then share some reflections on the process of periodizing church history.

I’m working with a division of Christianity into four periods: Early Christianity; Medieval Christendom; Modernity; and an emerging new, yet-to-be-named period I’ve been calling “what comes next”.  In between each period, there are hinge points: the Constantian and Gregorian transformations between early Christianity and Medieval Christianity; the Reformations between Medieval and modern Christianity; and postmodernity between modernity and what comes next.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned Early Christianity in this blog yet.  In part that’s because it’s the era of church history in which I’m weakest.  But probably more to the point it’s because this blog has mainly been interested with contrasting modernity and postmodernity, and early Christianity is a bit removed from that.  There is a lot of interesting and exciting new historiography on this period that I think reflects current scholarly trends related to modernity/postmodernity, but one can’t really make Origen into a modern or postmodern figure without doing some violence to him.

I’ve talked in my last two posts about medieval Christendom, but only to help provide a series of contrasts with modernity, postmodernity, and what comes next.  I expect medieval Christendom will continue to make similar cameo appearances in this blog.

The blog’s been a lot about modernity, postmodernity, and what comes next (hence the title), so I’m not going to try to say anything new about those periods here.

Instead, I’d like to reflect on the advantages and disadvantages of periodizing history.  Periodizations are analytical tools that scholars use, but they aren’t by any means God-given.  There are numerous other ways I could (and in other contexts do) periodize the history of Christianity, and others besides me use more schemes still.

If there isn’t agreement on how to periodize the history of Christianity, why do it?  There are several reasons.  Periodizing, like all scholarly tools (including classification schemes, theories, and even intellectual disciplines) help us recognize and understand certain things about the world.  Classifying classical music by time or country-of-origin helps us hear differences and similarities between pieces and composers.  Source-critical theory in Biblical studies helps us realize that texts come from contexts and have relations to those contexts.  Physics helps us see a realm of the world that we don’t with our everyday eyes.  The periodization I’ve been using has helped me see and understand (or at least reflect on) certain changes I feel going on in the culture around me.

But the problem with all analytical tools is that at the same time they help you see some things, they distract you from seeing others.  If you’re paying attention only to the time period in which a piece of classical music is written, you might miss the similarities between a Mozart sonata and a Hindemith sonata, which, different as they are, still exist.  If you’re only using source-critical theory to analyze your Biblical text, you might miss how it functions as a literary piece or the allegorical potentials in the text.  If you’re only thinking of the world in terms of physics, love is a difficult term to understand.  I’m aware, therefore, that the periodization I’m using conceals some things (and perhaps some very important things) at the same time it reveals others.

But I’m still going to use it.  I think the quest for us as scholars and humans should not be to develop one super-dooper, does-everything, Swiss-army-knife of an analytical tool that we can use in every situation.  Any attempt to do so ends up being reductionist, no matter how sophisticated or complex the classification scheme, theory, discipline, or other analytical tool is.  As the old saying goes, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”  I pride myself that there are a lot of things I can do in terms of handywork with just a hammer, pliers, flat-head screwdriver, and knife, but I recognize there are usually better ways of doing those things that involve better, more specific tools.

Instead of trying to develop universal tools, I think our task as scholars and humans should be to embrace methodological pluralism.  I think we should try to develop a range of tools we can use to understand different aspects of the world at different times for different reasons, and even sometimes different tools that can legitimately be used to understand the same aspect of the world at the same time.

Even more than that, since there are only so many tools one person can know how to use, I think we need to recognize the legitimacy of other analytical tools for understanding the world, at least in certain situations and sometimes even for the same situation.  I want plumbers to have different tools than I do as a handyman.  I also recognize that some handymen will use a different tool for doing the same task as I do, and both tools will get the job done.  Often, it just boils down to a question of personal preference.  True, sometimes there is a better tool with which to do things, and when that happens, I hope that I will be able to talk reasonably about it with the other handyman or woman and one of us will learn something.

Recognizing the validity of other tools goes against the grain a bit for scholars.  Instead of recognizing as chemists the validity of the English department or vice versa, academics often want to make out their way of understanding the world as the best, the truest.  Academics are slow to recognize the role of context or personal preference in determining which tools to use.  They are often quick to assume that there is a right tool to use, and it is the tool they themselves use, and all others much learn to use it, too.  But if we are honest with ourselves as academics, I think we need to recognize that the world – both in its physical and human manifestations – is much too complex for any one approach to be a satisfying explanation of it all.

So, even if it’s not always enjoyable, especially in academia, to recognize our limitations, I think that academics (and people in general) need to recognize not only their own personal limitations but the limitations of the analytical tools they use and appreciate and approve of the fact that others have other tools that they can use well and in a way that also contributes to the understanding and functioning of the world.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Christendom, Modernity, Postmodernity, and What Comes Next, Part 2

April 8, 2011 at 2:36 pm

On Tuesday, I posted the first half of a description of how I would characterize a periodization of history broken into Christendom, modernity, postmodernity, and what comes next.  This post completes that description.

Let me reiterate my three caveats: 1. All of my answers for “what comes next” are just guesses.  Since it comes next, it’s only partially here now and thus hard to discern.  2. I’m using the definition of postmodernity from last week that sees it as a transitional period between modernity and what comes next (though the answers also draw on postmodernity as critique).  In many cases, there will be a lot of overlap between the answers for postmodernity and one of those other two periods.  3. The answers below are brief and therefore simplistic.  If you’d like to see me elaborate on a question, indicate that in the comments.

Where is history going?

Christendom: The world is likely going to decay and fall apart.  People should work hard to prevent that from happening.

Modernity: The world is on a path toward ever greater progress.  People should get on board with the progress train.

Postmodernity: We can’t say where history is going because such an answer depends on metanarratives, and all metanarratives should be distrusted.

What comes next: The world is becoming an ever more globally connected and networked place.

How should government be organized and what is its role?

Christendom: Government should be in the hands of kings and nobility.  Government is for reinforcing social hierarchy and protecting all from violence.  The role of government is fairly limited (mostly taxes and war) and the amount of bureaucracy needed to carry out its functions is small.

Modernity: Government should be in the hands of nation-states, which increasingly (but not always!) became democratic.  Government is for the general good of those governed (at least rhetorically, if not in fact).  The role of government is much expanded, including not only taxes and war, but also the regulation of increasing areas of the economy and personal life.  As the role of government expands, an increasing amount of bureaucracy is needed to carry out the functions of government.

Postmodernity: The form and role of government are pretty much the same as in modernity.  However, rather than being seen as for the general good, governments are an arena in which competing interest groups can assert their claims and try to achieve power.

What comes next: I’m not sure yet.  Postmodernity’s move toward fragmentation and decentralization makes me wonder if government will increasingly be provided on a decentralized basis with many government functions subcontracted out.  If what comes next is as communal as I think it will be, government may also increasingly be in the form of communal norms agreed to by all who seek membership in the community and enforced by communal gatekeepers (think about how Wikipedia works).  It also seems like there will be a shifting of power away from the nation state toward either more global or more local authorities.

How should the church be organized?

Christendom: The church is universal.  It is also hierarchical, with bishops, monks, and increasingly scholars as competing sources of hierarchical power.

Modernity: The church is national or denominational.  Catholicism continues to centralize.  Among Protestants, more organizational models proliferate, from episcopal through congregational.  Many of these models vest authority in ministers or associations of ministers.  Denominations frequently embrace democracy, at least in principle.  Many denominations evolve bureaucratic structures to carry out various forms of Christian work.

Postmodernity: Organization is overrated.  Denominations aren’t relevant.  Instead, individual megachurches successfully market themselves to particular markets and provide a comprehensive set of services and ministries for members.

What comes next: I see no reason to believe that organizational diversity will decrease in the future.  I do think that parachurch organizations, church networks, and ad-hoc groups of churches will be increasingly important and take on some of the roles previously played by denominations.

What should the relationship be between churches and the state?

Christendom: There should be a close relationship, with church and state supporting each other and both working to create a stable society.

Modernity: While states support of churches still exists, increasingly the church and state are seen as separate realms, and this separation is seen as a good thing.

Postmodernity: Separation of church and state still exists, but religious forces have increasingly important political consequences.

What comes next: I’m not sure how this question will be answered yet, but I think it’s one with very important consequences for religion, government, and the prospects for peace.

How should civil society be organized?

Christendom: Non-church, non-state groups are organized by ascription, based on set characteristics of people.  For instance, guilds form around occupation and kin networks are formed through birth and marriage.

Modernity: Non-church, non-state groups are organized according to the voluntary principle.  Individuals can choose for themselves which groups to participate in.  Groups are then organized into formal and increasingly bureaucratic organizations.

Postmodernity: Formal organizations are just a way for some to assert power over others.  Do your own thing.  Or join groups based on shared identity: racial, ethnic, sexual, political, etc.  Competing interest groups ensure that no one group dominates society.

What comes next: My guess here is that non-church, non-state groups will increasingly be organized along social network models.  These models preserve the voluntary component from modernity, but are less likely to have the same sort of formal structure.  Groups may also become more ad-hoc or project-based.

What are the important forms of communication?

Christendom: Face-to-face communication; handwritten books and letters.

Modernity: Printing! Face-to-face communication and handwritten letters don’t go away though the variety of information communicated in these ways is less because there are other avenues available.

Postmodernity: TV!  Printing doesn’t go away.  Face-to-face communication doesn’t go away, but the type of information being communicated directly person-to-person is much more limited than in Christendom.

What comes next: The internet!  TV and printing don’t go away, nor does face-to-face communication.  Of course, there may arise new forms of communication I am not yet able to foresee, which would change everything.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Christendom, Modernity, Postmodernity, and What Comes Next, Part 1

April 5, 2011 at 9:33 pm

I’ve promised you loyal readers some elaboration on what I think are the characteristics of postmodernity.  I’m going to structure part of this answer by comparing Christendom, modernity, postmodernity, and what comes next (one possible periodization of the last 1000 years of Christian history; I’ll write a post on periodizing church history later).  I’ve structured this comparison in a series of questions, which owe a lot (even when the answers do not) to the writing of such emergent/emerging thinkers as Brian McLaren, Phyllis Tickle, and Doug Pagitt.  I decided this post was long enough to break it into two.  This is part 1, part 2 will come on Friday.

Three caveats: 1. All of my answers for “what comes next” are just guesses.  Since it comes next, it’s only partially here now and thus hard to discern.  2. I’m using the definition of postmodernity from last week that sees it as a transitional period between modernity and what comes next (though the answers also draw on postmodernity as critique).  In many cases, there will be a lot of overlap between the answers for postmodernity and one of those other two periods.  3. The answers below are brief and therefore simplistic.  If you’d like to see me elaborate on a question, indicate that in the comments.

What are the important sources of authority?

Christendom: “Traditional”, hierarchical authorities such as kings, bishops, etc. along with tradition.  You do and believe what tradition or the authorities tell you to do and believe.

Modernity: Individual reason.  You do and believe what your own individual reason tells you to do and belief.

Postmodernity: Calls into question the universality of reason, but keeps the influence on the individual as the arbiter of authority.  You do and believe what you want to do and believe.

What comes next: I think the answer here is going to be communal norms.  You do and believe what those in your social reference group do and believe.

What are people like?

Christendom: People are part of a great hierarchy of being.  People are inherently sinful.  Individuals are less important than humanity as a whole.

Modernity: People share in universal human reason.  People are either good or perfectable.  Individuals have increasing worth.

Postmodernity: People are limited by their own context.  Individuals have ultimate worth and, to some extent, define their own realities.

What comes next: People are social beings and part of social networks.  Individuals have freedom to choose their networks, but are then shaped by those networks.

What is truth, and how do you know it?

Christendom: Truth is knowledge of the eternal and unchanging known through tradition and revelation.

Modernity: Truth is logical propositions about the laws of the universe known through reason and the senses (interpreted by reason).

Postmodernity: Truth is relative and known through cultural background and personal experience.

What comes next: Truth is understanding contexts correctly, known through individual selection of communities of reference and subsequent communal consensus (think Wikipedia or the birthers as instances of truth defined by communal consensus).

Who are theology’s important dialogue partners?

Christendom: Philosophy, to help recover truths that have already been known

Modernity: Physical sciences, to determine the true nature of the world through experience and reasoned reflection

Postmodernity: Cultural studies, to help identify cultural contexts shaping worldviews

What comes next: Social sciences, to make sense of human diversity and human connectivity

How should we read the Bible?

Christendom: Literally (to get the basic sense of the words), allegorically (to see what they have to say about the salvation narrative), tropologically (to derive moral lessons), and anagogically (to find what they say about the ultimate ends of life).

Modernity: As a collection of logical propositions that can be selected apart from context and arranged to create logical arguments on any topic, or as a collection of myths not literally true because they contradict experience, though imparting some deeper truth (depending on where you shake out theologically)

Postmodernity: As a collection of stories that we give meaning to based on the personal experiences and beliefs that we bring to the texts as readers

What comes next: It will be interesting to see – perhaps as a source for a shared set of languages and stories that help shape and define the Christian community

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (4)

Education in the world that’s coming next

April 1, 2011 at 6:46 pm

A friend recently sent me this video: http://edupln.com/video/tedxnyed-will-richardson It’s 15 minutes, but well worth a view.  The presenter, Will Richardson, argues that the American educational system is set up around an old (I might say modernist) model of doing things: the point of our current educational system is to impart a large body of knowledge that is standard to everyone, and thus everyone can be tested on this knowledge using standardized testing.  Richardson contends, however, that the direction of the future of education is anything but this direction.  Instead, education will be much more individualized and rely much more heavily on accessing information and experts from around the world through the Internet.  In this manner, learners will pursue learning through collaborative processes oriented toward engaging with real-world scenarios.

After thinking to myself, “This guy’s right,” and “Why didn’t I think about the role of education in What Comes Next until now?” I had three other reactions:

First, as someone who thinks about both American educational policy and the future of America, I thought about how America needs to radically revamp its educational structure to prepare for the future of education.  Saying that America needs to radically revamp its educational structure is nothing new, and thus far actual examples of that have been few and far between.  But let’s face it – America is no longer a country that derives its economic wealth primarily from making things.  It’s a country that derives its economic wealth primarily from making ideas.  And the ability to make ideas depends on having a good educational system.  The recent dramatic cuts to educational budgets and attacks on teachers around the country are evidence to me that America’s days as world hegemon are limited, as we’re selling out the economic future of our country for a small amount of tax savings.  Richardson’s video is further evidence of the problems America is going to have maintaining its position in the world because of problems with its educational system.  Not that I consider America pre-eminence something that must be carried into the future.  I’m not nationalist like that.  I just worry about how America will react when it figures out it’s not on top anymore.

Second, as someone who aspires to teach, I wondered how this new model of education will affect my future career path.  This was only partly a consideration of what this will do to my job market.  I know that people will still need to learn in the future, in fact, even more so than today, so I’m not worried about the market for teaching going away.  The video did make me realize that how teaching looks in the future may be radically different, even at the collegiate level where I hope to be.  This reflection made me again glad that I’ve begun experimenting with blogging and other forms of social media, because I think that’s as good a way as any for me to prepare for whatever the future of education will be.

Third, as a missiologist, I pondered how this change in education will affect missions and people’s incentives to convert to Christianity.  Educational missions were a huge enterprise for Christian missions in the 19th and 20th centuries.  They paid off both in terms of converts and influence in society.  These were a very modern style of education.  In fact, one of the big attractions of Christianity for people outside the West was (and continues to be) that it was a path to modernization, through literacy, education, medicine, and the like.  Arguably, modern education has roots in Christianity through movements like Pietism.  Modern education also has other roots elsewhere, but I think there is a connection between it and Christianity.  As far as I can see, education in what comes next does not have roots in Christianity.  It has its roots in the Internet, which is by no means a Christian creation.

This leads me to two further questions: First, will Christians be able to adapt to new, what-comes-next forms of education so that they can continue to offer that as an ancillary to the gospel?  I think it will be most interesting here to see what Pentecostals do with education, since I think Pentecostalism and Independency may be the face of Christianity in what comes next.  Second, if Christianity isn’t able to offer education as an ancillary to the gospel, what will it offer?  Sure, Christians would like to think that people convert to Christianity because of the power and attraction of the gospel by itself, and sometimes people do.  My read on the history of mission, though, is that people are more likely to be attracted to the gospel when it comes with a related package of individual and societal benefits, whether that be the attraction of Roman Civilization to the Germans, literacy around the world in the 19th century, or healing from disease in many places and times throughout history.  I don’t see these ancillaries to the gospel as undercutting the primacy of the gospel.  I see them as part of the gospel: testimony to God’s desire to transform and redeem creation in all the ways in which it can be transformed and redeemed.  Education might continue to be part of that transformation, or it might be replaced by something else, and that would be fine, too.  But I think it’s worth thinking about how Christianity can seek to transform the world in ways that will seem vital and attractive in the world that’s coming next.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments (2)

My historiographical influences

March 29, 2011 at 10:30 am

Today, I’m taking a brief break from all of the modernity and postmodernity stuff I usually talk about to instead talk about good books.  I’m taking my last comprehensive exam for my doctoral program tomorrow.  This means I’ve completed all of the reading I need to do for coursework and exams, which allows me to step back and reflect on what the most influential books I read were.  So, here’s my list of influential books I read for my PhD program (alphabetical by author; I thought about ranking, but that was too hard):

Bosch, David J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991.

I like Bosch’s periodization of mission history and his interpretation of these periods as various paradigms of what it means to do mission.  This periodization has influenced how I think about modernity, postmodern, and all that jazz.

Buell, Denise. Why This New Race?: Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Buell has a fascinating discussion in her introduction of race, ethnicity, and religion as categories of historical analysis.  She argues for a large degree of overlap between the three.  Even more interesting, though, is her defense of the legitimacy of using these categories of analysis, which are modern categories, to interpret the Greco-Roman world, a discussion she ties to contemporary ethical concerns.  This discussion raises important questions about the ethics of historical scholarship and about our relation as contemporary scholars to our historical subjects.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1987.

Bynum’s use of gender as an interpretive framework in this book is amazing and powerful.  Bynum uses food not just to uncover the ends and means of women’s devotion and theology; she uses it to point out the ways in which gender affects what counts as important religious symbols.  Her discussion of the ways in which women and men in medieval Europe thought about not just these religious symbols but gender itself differently is fascinating, and I really appreciate the way in which she makes the feminine normative in her last chapter.

Campbell, James T. Songs of Zion: The African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Campbell has one of the best discussions I’ve seen of how two groups (here the African-American AME and South African independent black churches) can use each other as mirrors to reflect upon their own experiences and situations.  Campbell also captures well how such mirrored images are (like all images) multi-valent and capable of producing a myriad of various responses and plans of social action.

Clossey, Luke. Salvation and Globalization in the Early Jesuit Missions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Clossey’s use of globalization as a lens to interpret missions closely parallels what I hope to do in my own dissertation.  To that end, his discussion in his first chapter of what it means to write a global history (as opposed to a collection or comparison of local or regional histories) was very useful.

Cusack, Carole M. Conversion among the Germanic Peoples (Cassell Religious Studies) London, UK Cassell, 1998.

Cusack includes a discussion of sociological, psychological, religious, and anthropological factors for conversion in which she examines and critiques each of these approaches.  I found this a helpful analysis of these varying approaches.

Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580. 2nd Ed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005.

Duffy’s book was my introduction to revisionist historiography of the Reformation.  The book therefore taught me that no matter how much discontinuity there is in a historical transition, there is also continuity.  Duffy’s also a good writer, which I appreciate.

Edwards, Mark U., Jr. Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1994.

The thing I appreciate most about Edwards’ historiography is his explicitly stated warning that historians should not read back later events or conclusions into the understanding of participants of events as they were unfolding.  While there are times when we should interpret the past in light of what came later to understand the flow of history, Edwards’ warning is a reminder that to understand our historical subjects, we must view their situations as they did, that is, without knowing what would happen next.

Fletcher, Richard. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. New York : H. Holt and Co., 1998.

Fletcher’s book represents a style of magisterial history that I don’t aspire to, but I did enjoy reading.  Fletcher’s writing makes you feel like you’re sitting in a big armchair next to a fire in a study in England listening to him talk.  I also appreciate this book as a demonstration of the fact that Europe was a mission field once, too.

Fulton, Rachel. From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800-1200. New York : H. Holt and Co., 1998.

Fulton’s powerful and personal declaration at the start of the book of the importance of having empathy for our historical subjects is deeply challenging to how we think about our task as historians and our relationship to our historical subjects.  While this principle of empathy may seem to stand in contrast to some of the other writers here who emphasize moral proclamation in history, it reminds us that we historians also have a moral obligation to our subjects not to objectify them, but to understand them.

Jolly, Karen Louise. Popular Religion in Late Saxon England: Elf Charms in Context. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

How can you not like a book about elf charms?  Jolly’s description of popular religion is persuasive for me: not something that set over against something else called elite religion, but as a collection of beliefs and habits shared by all, elite and non-elite.

Mack, Phyllis. Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment: Gender and Emotion in Early Methodism. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Mack’s book is great for two reasons.  First, she really understands religious agency and gets that such an understanding of agency is different than secular understandings of agency, but still a legitimate form of understanding agency.  Second, her treatment of gender is well-done.  She depicts how men and women in early British Methodism set about the same task (fashioning an appropriate sense of agency) and had to undertake similar work in that task (engaging the emotions), but did so in different ways with different results.

Marks, Robert. The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007.

I enjoyed Marks’ book for several reasons.  First, it was my introduction to global history.  Second, the environment is a major character in it, and Marks shows concern for the environment.  Third, I appreciate the Sino-centric telling of the story; it’s a good reminder to Westerners that the West is not the prime mover and turning point of all history.

Robert, Dana L. Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.

I think my adviser is an amazing person and scholar, and I couldn’t be happier or more honored to be studying with her.  (And I say that not just because she might read this.)  I also think this book is amazing – extremely knowledgeable and well-informed, but so accessible.  I hope my writing can equally well-informed and equally accessible.

Sensbach, Jon F. Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2005.

Sensbach’s book is great because it gives blacks not only a central place in creating their own Christianity in the Atlantic world (the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and Western Africa), but a significant role in creating Christianity period in the Atlantic world.  This book is a great example of a story where indigenous initiative in spreading Christianity is put front and center.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York : Harper & Row, 1984.

Todorov’s history of the Spanish conquest of the America isn’t just a history; it’s a powerful philosophical meditation on power, ethics, and how we relate to the other.  This book is a great example of history as philosophy (or is it the other way around?).

Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2002.

This book contains numerous incredibly powerful interpretive ideas and well-crafted analogies for thinking about Christianity, culture, and missions.  The two I think most deserve attention are 1) Walls’ identification of the “pilgrim principle” and the “homing principle” as both impulses inherent to Christianity, creating a dialectical tension in the faith; and 2) Walls’ meditations on what is common to Christianity across the ages and cultures.  (His answer: Jesus, the Bible, baptism, and communion.)

Wigger, John. American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Not only is Wigger’s book a really enjoyable read, and not only did it make me love Francis Asbury, but Wigger’s book is also one of the best examples I’ve seen of how to do good history through the medium of biography.  Wigger doesn’t describe Asbury’s context so that we can understand Asbury, as many historical biographers do.  Instead, he describes Asbury so that we can understand his context, a much rarer and more difficult task.

Wacker, Grant. Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

I really like Wacker’s attempt to capture “kitchen table conversations”.  It’s a great example of paying attention to the everyday to discover the grand significance of a movement.  His discussion of Pentecostal agency is also interesting – believing that the Spirit did everything and humans nothing gave Pentecostals great freedom which translated into great action.  Wacker’s thematic approach has also been influential in planning my dissertation.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Defining Postmodernity

March 25, 2011 at 1:21 pm

If you’ve read past blog posts or continue to read future blog posts, I think you’ll quickly notice that contrasting modernity and postmodernity (as exemplified in the new title for the blog!) is a big thing for me.  Yet, as I’ve realized from reading comments, my understanding of these terms is not always the same as others’.  So, I thought it would be useful for readers to see what I mean by those terms.

I think there are at least two different ways in which the term “postmodernity” commonly gets used, and I’d like to suggest a third in this post.  This equivocation in the term is what’s caused some of disagreement between some of you loyal readers and I on previous posts.  (Other parts of our disagreement are probably because we actually disagree.  And that’s OK.)

In the first definition, modernity can be seen as a critique of (or even the death of) modernity.  In this understanding of the term, postmodernity is actually a part of modernity.  (As a professor at my college used to say, “How can it not be a part of modernity?  It’s got modernity right in its name!”)  In this definition, postmodernity is merely a deconstructive and critical movement.  Here, postmodernity raises some serious questions about modernity’s understanding of various important philosophical categories: assumptions about knowledge, truth, humans, power, etc.  Many Christians (and non-Christians) are not a fan of this type of modernity, as they see it as just a bunch of relativism that is threatening their cherished modern notions of Truth (absolute, with a capital T).  Many Christians (and non-Christians) are also frustrated by postmodernity thus defined because they (rightly) recognize that it doesn’t lend itself to constructing anything, only deconstructing.  Those who have been influenced by philosophy or literary studies will probably use the word this way.  That’s not primarily how I use the term though.

There’s another way of defining postmodernity, which is to view it as not just a deconstruction or critique of modernity, but as a new period of history coming after modernity.  This new period comes with its own assumptions, values, questions, and aesthetics.  These assumptions, values, and questions can be (and are) used constructively.  I’ll indicate more fully in a later approach what I think some of the assumptions and values are, but they include things like diversity, organicism, individualism, etc.  Some of these assumptions are carried over from postmodernity in the first sense, but put to new uses.  This sense of postmodernity certainly isn’t into absolute, universal Truth in the same way modernity is, but it doesn’t involve a relativist rejection of all notions of truth, as postmodernity in the first sense often does.  In this sense of postmodernity, it is not merely critique but also new proclamation.  This sense is more common, I think, in history, missiology, and the emerging church movement, all of which have had their impact on me.  Thus, it’s mainly in this sense that I’ve been using the term.

But I think there’s perhaps a third way of looking at postmodernity, which is to think of its relation to modernity and what comes next after modernity in ways analogous to the Reformation’s relation to medieval Christendom and modernity: as a hinge point.

This insight came to me on Monday as I was reading student midterms on modernity, several of which talked about the Reformation.  The Reformation stands as a middle ground between medieval Christendom and modernity.  A lot of the historiography on the Reformation nowadays is trying to connect and contrast the Reformation world to the late medieval world.  This historiography has argued (convincingly, in my opinion), that in many ways the Reformation is a natural outgrowth of the late medieval world.

At the same time, the Reformation was also a great criticism of the late medieval world.  As much as Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, and Bucer all started out as denizens and products of the late medieval world, they criticized that world and rejected important parts of its worldview at the same time as they preserved others.

Yet the Reformation was not only a rejection of the late medieval world, it was also the beginning of something new.  It was immediately the beginning of Protestantism and its associated new theological and ecclesiological system.  But the impacts of Protestantism didn’t stop with the formation of Protestantism.  They spilled over into (and reinforced independent developments originating in) other areas of life like culture, politics, technology, philosophy, science, and social organization.  These changes led to the creation of a new era in Europe called modernity.  So, I would argue that the Reformation stands at the root of a lot of modernity.  Yet it isn’t really a part of modernity itself, but rather a precursor to things yet to come.

I think one could view postmodernity in the same way.  It’s a product of modernity.  It preserves some of modernity’s assumptions about the world while at the same time radically critiquing and/or rejecting others.  It’s also the beginning of something new – a new era of (at least Western) history, in which some of the changes initiated in postmodernity will be played out.  But a hundred or two hundred years from now, when we’re thinking about this new cultural/philosophical/religious/political/scientific system, I don’t think we’ll call it postmodernity.  I don’t know what we will call it yet, but I think we’ll think of postmodernity, like the Reformation, as a movement or a moment between the times, a hinge connecting two other periods.

So, I’d like to start using “postmodernity” in the third sense, and calling the new system that’s coming into being “what comes next”.  I’ll still probably use “postmodernity” in the second sense because that’s how a lot of my influences and conversation partners use it.  But really, deep down, it’s not postmodernity in the second sense that interests me.  It’s what comes next.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

The Art of Writing a Prospectus

March 18, 2011 at 1:41 pm

As any of you who have ever been in school know, there’s a lot of bad academic writing out there.  Academic writers can often be wordy, unclear, dry, or obtuse.  They frequently use too much jargon and usually lack storytelling skills.  Having suffered through reading at least my fair share of such writing, I have made it a life goal of mine to write good academic prose.

As a way of helping myself achieve this goal, I pay attention to what my friend Ed has to say about writing.  Ed is an English teacher and aspiring novelist.  He’s a good writer himself and has been trained in how to write.  He has even taken classes at the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop.  (Way to go, my home state, for having one of the premier writing programs in the country!)

Ed once relayed a piece of advice he’d been given at a workshop.  The instructor suggested that after aspiring novelists complete their novels, they should just delete the file and start over.  Not revise it thoroughly, but delete it completely.  And then write the whole thing again.  The instructor’s point was that before you start writing a novel, there are several things you have yet to figure out, which you’ll have resolved by the time you’re done writing the novel.  If you write the novel over again, you’ll have a much better sense of what’s important in the novel, who the characters are, where the plot is going, etc.  A rewritten novel will be more consistent, coherent, and all-around better.

This advice is extreme enough that it stuck with me.  I thought about it again this week as I sat down to revise the prospectus for my dissertation.  Over winter break, I wrote a first draft of the prospectus which was based on a proposal I had written for a class a year and a half ago.  I showed the first draft to my adviser in January.  She approved, but suggested some revisions.  I was looking at the prospectus this week, trying to figure out how to restructure the first part of it to incorporate these revisions when it struck me: Maybe the answer wasn’t to revise the current prospectus.  Maybe it was to take Ed’s instructor’s advice and rewrite the whole thing.

I care a lot about structure in my writing, so I made an outline of my prospectus as it stood.  Then I outlined the original proposal off of which the first draft of the prospectus was based.  I also outlined the required pieces of the prospectus as stipulated by department guidelines.  In doing so, I realized that the first draft of my prospectus wasn’t based on what the department required.  It was based on that earlier proposal I’d written and then hacked up and reassembled to try to fit the department guidelines.  That realization gave me resolution – it was time to rewrite.

The rewriting actually went really well.  Since the prospectus was short (12 pages), it didn’t take too long (certainly much less time than rewriting a novel).  I did cheat a bit and reuse some of the footnotes from the first draft.  Because I had carefully outlined both the original prospectus and the department guidelines, I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how to best arrange it.  Rewriting also helped me think in terms of the overall arc of the prospectus rather than how to put unconnected pieces together so that they could address the guidelines.  When I was finished with the rewrite, I was very pleased.

I don’t know that when I come to the dissertation itself I will try completely rewriting any of the chapters.  I expect it will depend a lot on how much of a time crunch I’m experiencing.  But I do hope to benefit more from Ed’s suggestions on the craft of writing, and I do hope that the dissertation will end up being a work of good academic prose.

By David W. Scott | Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Comments (0)