Back to theology/culture from todays missional conversation with students here in our place, about place... modernity: Autonomous Self is Primary, Community is Secondary, Place is Tertiary/Disposable/Universalized (to achieve the good life, you should just move to a new,better place, you name new places after the places you destroy, ie. Tallgrass Estates, etc. Place is turned into a commodity, ie starbucks et al). Community is not connected to place; so churches and organizations and businesses and families can detach from place, and place is not what helps to connect their members. Darrel Guder describes modernity (especially hyper modernity in North America) this way: Freely choosing, autonomous individuals, deciding out of rational self-interest to enter into a social contract in order to construct a progressive society, became the central ideology of modernity. Where is the role of a specific place in this kind of ideology/theology? Especially the abandoned places of Modernity/Empire like ours where having limitless choices, and the ability to access them, is not present? In Modernity, where all places are deemed exchangeable, removable, de-sacralized, the most fragile places will be hurt, ie environmental racism. After all what is important is the individual self and the ability for that self to have limitless options. Postmodernity flips this, and to thrive in postmodernity I believe is to flip ones priorities and sense of connection (this goes for groups including churches): Place is Primary (wendell berry, wes jackson), committment to place is vital for living the gospel (john perkinss 3Rs, many eco-theologians); An inherent aspect of Place is its ecological community, and so too human communities are fed by Place and nurture it in all its diversity; Community is Secondary to Place. human communities are formed then to work on the healing of Place and all that hurts it. Self is then embedded in community(ies) and in Place in order to realize its fullest whole sense of Self and the good life. The mission of the society and its government, its churches and faith communities, of ones life, is then connected to Place. Place as it really is, and as it can be, not nostalgically to what it has been re-imagined to have been in the past. So place, which gets you beyond your narrow sense of self, also ultimately gets you beyond your narrow sense of community too. Nod to my missional church brothers and sisters. see what spending time in the garden with theology can do to you....
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 02:59:12 +0000