as stated in the previous post, Andy Crouch is the former editor of Re:Generation Quarterly and regularly contributes to Christianity Today. as revealed elsewhere in the book, Andy is a Wesleyan Christian. while many may see labels as unnecessary, i think, as a Van Tilian presuppositionalist, they help us to better understand the way in which the person being talked about views the faith they profess and what sorts of ideas (or baggage) they bring to the table. he also represents the “glen” paradigm that Leonard Sweet described as striving for “evolving message/preserving methods.” to review, this is the paradigm in which popular culture is the root of all evil and the introduction of techno savvy ways of doing church and worship is the unforgivable sin.

Andy begins his article by describing the problem that we in 21st century America face in the church. the struggle between the so-called fledgling movement of modernism and the so-called emerging movement of postmodernism. andy describes both of these using the metaphors of the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB hereafter) at the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando, Florida and the Mall of America (MoA hereafter) in Bloomington, Minnesota respectively. the former represents “the expression of one enormous collective effort, a massively coordinated pursuit of an integrated goal,” sending a man to the moon at the call of President John F. Kennedy in 1962, a giant, utilitarian building that brings together all of the dreams and wishes of putting a man on the moon, and the goal that brings together people from all different walks of life to share in a “compelling master story.” on the flip side of this coin, the MoA is completely antithetical to the idea of a collective effort and a transcendent, unifying master story in that it “overwhelms with its cacophony of options” in relativizing everything and splitting one idea (capitalism in this case) into a million different market-driven, niche-targeted possibilities. for Crouch, it is the MoA where “postmodernity really begins.”

in fact, Crouch says that:

to hear some prophets, and critics, of postmodernism talk, you might think that the Kennedy Space Center and all it represents is now a rusting, nostalgic shadow of its former self. the most overexcited folds will tell you (perhaps throwing in some French) that back in the bad (or good) old modern days, we actually believed we could know something about the world. But the certainties of the modern era are lost. everything is relative. scientific certainty is a myth (or a language game or a social construct), and the new generation, who are coming along fast and are about to invade your church (or who are staying away from your church in droves because you are so deucedly modern), don’t believe in Truth. they are much more interested in Narrative, or Mystery, or just Nose Rings.

while this is probably an overgeneralization to argue his point, it is this bias in which Crouch operates and in which Sweet characterizes the glen clearing.

Crouch then goes on to argue that what is called “postmodernism” does not actually exist, at least not as a distinct break from modernism, but is, rather, little more than an extension of modernism in that postmodernism is wholly related to and dependent on modernism. culturally, postmodernism is “the outworking (in both philosophy and lifestyle) of the consumer economy that modernity has made possible,” and intellectually “postmodernism is the intensifying and completion of a modern project that began hundreds of years ago.” rather than the common term, Crouch suggests that “ultramodern” is, perhaps, a better word to use than “postmodern.”

having discussed the terms, the “so what?” question is then addressed. this is, “so what does this have to do with the church?” Crouch first answers this by identifying the key players. he labels the majority of denominational Protestantism as the VAB and the megachurch movement as the MoA. the former encapsulating “a massive, integrated, command and control structure whose grandest promises now seem vaguely embarassing but which even today controls the lion’s share of resources and production capacity,” and the latter as “a horizontal, preference-driven, bricolage in which consumer choice is carefully cultivated and satisfied through myriad carefully tailored stores (small groups, specialized worship services, and other offerings).” Crouch is satisfied with this assessment as the megachurches, in his mind, are wholly related to and dependent on denominational Protestantism.

Crouch’s answer to the problem that postmodernism (or “ultramodernism”) creates is, surprisingly, the sacraments. he sees baptism as “the church’s most powerful response–perhaps its only response–to individualism.” this comes through the loss of our personal identity in the rite, and our ingrafting into the greater body of believers and becoming the possession of God, rather than staying an autonomous individual who is not responsible to anyone but himself. while baptism, according to Crouch, responds to the distorted view of the self that postmodernism champions, communion, or the Eucharist, offers the ideal answer to postmodern consumerism in that “in communion we quite literally consume the most basic of goods, food and drink, and that consumption is taken up into Christ.” communion for Crouch represents a levelling of the of the corporate “dinner” table in that all participants get the same amount no matter their social status or the size of their checking accounts. this sacrament also responds to the MoA idea in taking away the great plethora of choices and having only one meal on the menu.

and so it is in practice, rather than belief, that Crouch believes that both modernism and postmodernism should look to for the answers to their respective issues. for the postmoderns, the sacraments answer the “hunger for a true story” in active participation of the greatest story ever told. for moderns, the sacraments answer the benign “recital of facts and figures” and replace those facts and figures, or knowledge or beliefs, with active participation in rites that far exceed the greatest thoughts that man can come up with. when one engages in the regular practice of the sacraments, Crouch states that “the sacraments liberate us from the addiction to novelty that is the postmodern counterpart to modernity’s quest for information.” Crouch goes on to describe the relativizing of the modern (American) church in its offering of specialized services targeted at specific marketing demographics, correctly diagnosing that, in doing so, these churches are alienating any person that does not meet the demographic of the niche-targeted services. while these services make strangers of the better part of humanity, the sacraments “make strangers of us all” in that they are from another era of history yet bring all people together “in a journey in which none of us is priveleged, none of us knows the ways any better than another, and yet all of us are finding ourselves accompanied by another who is explaining the Scriptures to us, revealing Himself in the breaking of bread.”

probably one of the most profound statement to be found in Crouch’s article is “if we are not observing the two practices that reflect what the Bible says the church is–the Body of Christ that is nourished on His body broken for us–is it any surprise that our churches do not look like the Body of Christ but instead look like the clientele of one or another shop at the Mall of America?” and i think that statement neatly sums up the main thrust of his article. for him, we need to get back to the basics and back to the basic practices of the Christian church and story, and in doing so we will be answering the challenges of both the waning modern movement and the waxing postmodern movement by bringing all into an overarching story in which the basic practices remove the garbage piled on by the wider culture and restore us to what the Church truly is, the unfragmented and beautiful body of Christ.

i thought this was overall a good article. i found myself agreeing with much of what he said and didn’t find disagreement in too many places. Andy’s metaphors (the VAB and MoA) to place the problem were very insightful and did justice, i think, to the overall question of postmodernism. i also agree with his assessment that postmodernism cannot really be seen as a break with modernism because it is totally dependent upon modernism for its very existence. it is not a break from a prior tradition, in the way that the Reformation was a break from Romanism, but rather a splinter reacting to particular problems within the larger institution. his stance that mass consumerism has created the breeding ground for the relativization of Christian churches also resonated with me and i agree with his view that we need to get back to the basics of Christianity and throw out all the fluff that gets in the way, waters down the “story”, and is just bad “marketing” (as an aside, i want to further emphasize this point in saying how disgusted with mass consumerism i am and the lengths that churches will go to satiate the need for a large menu of specialized services that have nothing to do with the Gospel and everything to do with the fickle trendiness of our wider culture, case in point). i admire his belief that ultimate Truth is at stake in the relativizing efforts of much of (American) Christianity today and applaud his zeal to defend the church that stands in hopes of bringing it back to wholeness, rather than more splinterings than are already present.

with this said, there are definitely some places in which i disagree with Andy, most of these disagreements being in the methods he wants to preserve rather than the message he wants to evolve. first, and the smallest disagreement, i don’t agree that the main dividing line is between denominational Protestantism and the megachurch movement. there are many “postmodern,” “emergent,” whatever term you want to use within that spectrum churches that would not be classified as a “megachurch”. while the megachurch is probably the easiest target in that bigger churches will have needs for more services and the resources for more targeted ministries, i don’t think it’s fair to say that megachurches are the product of postmodernism and encapsulate all that is wrong with the church today, in the way that it seems Andy does in pitting denominational Protestantism against the megachurches. and i say that as one who is not very fond at all of the idea of a megachurch.

my main disagreement with Andy is in his answer to the problem of postmodernism and the emergent movement. as discussed, his answer is the regular and sincere practice of the sacraments, baptism and communion. it seemed to me that Andy was so focused on what we could “do,” that he seemed to overshadow the necessity of faith. of course he does note that “no one would dare to practice the life of Christian faith if they did not have some reason to trust that the Gospel were true,” but this seems more of an afterthought and is actually contained in a parenthetical (using dashes, rather than parentheses) statement. his emphasis on practice, rather than belief, is framed in within his strong belief that “the real danger of the church in the twenty-first century will be practical–the danger of succumbing to a way of life that renders even the most orthodox beliefs vestigal at best,” or the culture, rather than the ideology, of the postmodern, emergent movement.

i think that what Andy fails to address is that “right practice” of the sacraments can only be spawned out of right belief in the Gospel. otherwise, you have the same problem that currently exists of thousands of Christians simply “going through the motions” without thinking about (or even knowing) exactly what it is that they are participating in. i don’t think the problem is that the modern church does not have a right view of the sacraments (although that can definitely be identified as a subset of the larger problem), but rather that the modern church does not have a right view of the Gospel. the Gospel has been so compartmentalized and fragmented and “relativized” (to use a buzzword) that there should be no surprise that there is misled theology about the sacraments. but teaching people about the right use of the sacraments, removed from a right view of Gospel and doctrine as a whole, will do nothing but encourage people in a works-based gospel that makes them feel better about themselved in their “active participation” of a meaningless faith.

it is precisely because of what Christ did through the original institution of the sacraments and His great work on the Cross and through His exaltation that makes those sacraments meaningful and “relevant” for today’s church, and not the sacraments themselves. we are instructed by God to worship Him in word and sacrament together, not one at the expense of the other, lest we create the same kind of postmodern niche of those who only want to worship through sacrament and not with the hearing of the Word.