Embarking on a New Study

This semester I'm doing an independent study for the last of my Religious Studies credits. It's called "The Church in Postmodernity," and the goal is to explore exactly what postmodernity is, what the Church is, and how the two can interact and (maybe) even thrive together. Some have said that postmodernity is here to stay, and some think it's a passing fad. So how do we as a Church react and respond to that, or do we even do anything? I'm really hoping to explore the question of the depth of interaction between the Church and the culture. Should the Church even respond to culture? Should it change up its practices and attitudes in order to reach those immersed in the culture? Or should the Church be removed and set apart from the culture, as a manifestation of the Kingdom of God here that is far more eternal than the come-and-go cultural paradigms that surround us? These are questions I'm really looking forward to digging into this semester with this class.

The first book I'm reading is called Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K.A. Smith, which explores postmodernism as a philosophy from three different angles and appropriates it for the Church. I've only just started the book, but I really enjoy it so far and resonate with what Smith has to say. In the first chapter, he pretty much laid out what his end goal was and how he would get there, and I found myself agreeing with most everything he had to say about the Church and its relationship  with the culture. Which has me a little bit wary, because I want to be able to go into this study with an open mind, rather than just reinforcing what I already think but haven't been able to articulate to this point.

Hopefully I'll be blogging more in the near future about my explorations into these questions, so be on the lookout for that. And hopefully these posts will spark more discussion so that we can all learn together.