I don't think we can over estimate the importance that the culture of modernity plays in our churches, mostly unnoticed. Our understanding and our ability to foster a common life is dependent upon our understanding of the world we live in today. We throw these words around without much care and cloud the waters of understanding. Since I will be referring to them from time to time in this blog, I thought I should introduce how I understand them.
Traditional Era - The traditional era was primarily agrarian and reflects agrarian values and rhythms of daily life. The Bible is written in the context of agrarian, traditional society.
Modern Era - The modern era begins with the Renaissance. The first question that the modern era asks is "Who says?" As moderns we have been continually concerned with the problem of authority. That concern continues today.
The modern era includes several historical and cultural periods such as the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Modernity.
Modernity - Modernity is a simple one-word summary for the culture that arose along side of modern science. Modern science was revolutionary because of its reliance on rationalism over traditional answers. This rational approach privileged observation and the scientific method over dogma. This lead to three more important cultural revolution that have created modernity; capitalism, technology and telecommunications. These revolutions have created the dominant features of our day like rationalism, secularism, globalism, privatization and more.
Modernism - Modernism is the philosophy expressing the Enlightenment confidence in our ability to shape. create, improve our world through reason, practical experimentation and technology.
Postmodernism - Postmodernism is the philosophy challenging the optimistic assumptions of the Enlightenment.
As we explore our common life we will return to these themes and explore their impact om our faith.
