Some time before we moved away from Portland we learned that Imago Dei Community had been categorized in some guy's book as an "emerging" church. I think there is a proper definition floating around out there somewhere, but the gist of it is that emerging (i.e. postmodern) churches shie away from "institutional" church structures in favor of more relational and affective forms of worship and spirituality, which they feel to be more authentic. They are more likely to adopt a variety of traditional forms of worship and liturgy, to value narrative and the arts, and to have little patience with making rules about proper Christian behavior. In at least one author's opinion (so I've heard), emerging also includes a postmodern skepticism toward truth/knowledge claims made about the faith, springing in large part from a historical guilt over past acts of violence and coercion committed in the name of Christianity.
So far as this goes, it does seem to describe Imago more or less--at least, many of its congregants. Certainly Pastor Rick would insist that we can make truth claims--indeed, must make truth claims--though other aspects of our faith should prevent us from doing harm to others in the process. So is a non-institutional, pluri-traditional, relational-affective, story-telling church that insists on claims of truth properly postmodern?
The church shouldn't set as a goal being postmodern for the sake of postmodernism, but it is interesting to think about how the church might interact with postmodern critiques of modern society (of which there is much still left). I think among the most positive benefits of the postmodern turn in recent Evangelical Christian circles are the recommittment to the value of authenticity within communities, the reexamination of and openness toward traditional and cultural worship practices, and an increased willingness to engage uncertainty in individuals.
Most everyone I met at Imago told some version of the same story: I grew up with an image of Christianity that didn't appeal to me because the people were hypocritical or the teaching was dogmatic. I like Imago because I can ask questions and the people are so friendly. In fact, I could tell my own story as a version of this one. Imago is a church of broken people--mostly damaged Christians, but many who grew up without faith of any sort. This common background created an intimate space within the already circumscribed cultural space of Christianity. We'd all seen what I call "shiny happy Christianity," and we didn't want it anymore, because it wasn't real life and faith ought to speak into real life.
One of the more striking things about a first visit to Imago is the placement of icons on the communion tables. Only occasionally does someone get up front and talk about how icons work, and they probably should do more to educate the congregation, but the principle is that this ancient practice of worship via images can still be worked into a modern setting. It means in part a recognition of our embodied existence, i.e., that we aren't floating minds but have these physical forms through which we know ourselves and our world. I appreciate gestures toward more holistic and aesthetic worship because I think bodies are really interesting, if often challenging, and certainly an unavoidable aspect of human experience. The flesh may be weak, but it was still good enough for Christ.
Finally, more than anything else, "postmodern" Christians want to feel safe saying they don't always understand all aspects of the faith. It is, after all, difficult at times to understand miracles, or the attribution of God's hand in taking the Promised Land by military force. I think since Pastor Rick came from an atheist background himself, he was more understanding of people who begin "outside" the faith, or who aren't always firmly within it. The leadership in general, in implicit and impalpable ways, managed to encourage an open atmosphere where people could honestly express disbelief or confusion without ever suggesting that belief didn't matter. Rather, faith becomes the individual's responsibility, a value expressed most often in the form of, "we're not worried about keeping butts in the seats." In other words, not measuring success by attendance, Imago needn't fear "losing" people--they aren't even technically "theirs" anyhow, properly understood.
The online magazine TheOoze (theooze.com) emphasizes this last facet perhaps above all else, in large part because its founder, Spencer Burke, left mainstream evangelical Christianity over the issue of honest questioning. But it's unclear just how far Burke is willing to take that. That is, questioning is not necessarily a good in itself, nor can it be an end in itself. Those who wish it to be an end are really saying they are afraid of what might happen, or might be required of them, were answers proffered and affirmed as articles of belief. In particular, the fear is that tradition will be constraining and, in fact, oppressive, but as there is no such thing as absolute liberty, one must recognize the necessity of all actions and belief occurring within contexts, and therefore one must discover some reliable, worthy context in which to think and move if one is to live actively.
To always ask questions is to imagine you can live without a context, which is to remain ignorant of the context you inevitably inhabit. The point of orthodoxy is not to oppress and control people, but to guide our interpretation of the world as it keeps changing around us. It is not absolute, but it rightly changes only very slowly and very cautiously; when it becomes absolute it has likely become someone's idol. Some would say the same of the Bible, though I have not thought through all the implications of that being true.
The other danger, I think, is intellectual laxity. Modernity, especially in the form of scientific research, challenged Christians to account for their faith in terms of reason and the natural world. Sometimes they bought into modernity's assumptions to the point of losing the heart of the faith, but I would argue they were more justified in doing that than in turning against reason and learning itself. Postmodernity invites a kind of personal-narrative approach to truth, an "it feels right" or an "in my experience" standard that at least potentially discourages thoughtful reflection on one's justifications for belief or the consistency of one's beliefs. Accepting nonobjective experience into one's account of the world needn't mean also ejecting rational reflection on it.
All in all, I do think the church as a whole can benefit from the critiques leveled by postmodernism, but I am wary of those who are too quick to jump on the pomo bandwagon. To treat it as the next big thing is (a) to act just like they were acting under modernism by looking outside the faith for their models and standards and (b) to risk compromising the faith by uncritically adopting attractive philosophies. But, as in the past, God is the God of history and therefore nothing we can do can derail his plans for us. Modernism didn't kill the faith; postmodernism won't either.
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