New thoughts this morning; I’m reading A New Kind of Christian and I feel a bit like the journeying journalling pastor discovering the breadth of modernism and postmodernist reaction to it. “I’m beginning to see [our systematic theologies] as an artifact of worship from the modern era, no less sincere or magnificent than medieval cathedrals — in fact, you could call them modern conceptual cathedrals.” (p.24)
The modern era was all about control… and once we master the task of controlling machines (which I think we can say we’ve done), we will naturally turn to the task of controlling nature, our bodies, people. Perhaps one of the major pro-abortion arguments is an expression of this modern eventuality. I wonder if George Orwell’s book, Nineteen Eighty Four was not very much off the mark, though it would need to be seen in a far more figurative sense than it normally is — i.e., think of it more as figurative than allegorical. From his vantage point, he was illustrating the eventuality of the path… and perhaps it’s a stark figurative illustration of the end of the path of modernity. Just musing.
So the question of the day is, if Amish or Hutterite colonies are viewed (and I’m not saying I think of them this way) simply as groups of people who for reasons of their faith who are unable to grapple with the modern world… in as few as 25 years, will our modern expressions of church look just as anachronistic?
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