Neo-traditionalists turn to traditions!
Today I went on over to the ‘Emergent Village Weblog’ and found something that pointed me to the following article called ‘A Return to Tradition A new interest in old ways takes root in Catholicism and many other faiths‘ [page3] By Jay Tolson Posted December 13, 2007…
Something of a celebrity ex-pastor himself, Brian McLaren, the popular author and a founder of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Md., recently left the pastorate to talk and write about the emergent movement and other developments in Christianity. While at Cedar Ridge, which catered specifically to previously “unchurched” seekers, McLaren instituted a Eucharistic liturgy and contemplative prayer retreats. And he appreciates the role of tradition in the new self-organizing communities that are sprouting up around the country. “Protestantism has been in a centrifugal pattern for so long, with each group spinning away from others,” McLaren says. “But now there is some kind of pull back to the center.”
Hmmmm… a community of “Atonement – Eucharistic Praxis” perhaps?
Like McLaren, Tony Jones, author of The New Christians: Dispatches From the Emergent Frontier and national coordinator of Emergent Village, talks about the postmodern aspects of the new traditionalism. People of the postmodern mindset—particularly 20- and 30-somethings—question the hyperindividualism of modern culture. They search for new forms of community but tend to be wary of authority figures and particularly of leaders, Jones says, who take divisive liberal or conservative social-political positions—one reason why the emergent groups tend to be antipastoral. “The problem is not the issues,” says Jones, who belongs to an emergent church, Solomon’s Porch, in Minneapolis. “The problem is how we talk about issues. We are going to live in reconciliation with each other, and traditional practices are what restore us and hold us together.”
The young neotraditionalists also have an almost intuitive attraction to liturgy, ritual, and symbol as forms of knowledge that complement the dominant rational, scientific one. “There is a certain kind of postmodern sensibility that loses confidence in the rational explanation of everything,” McLaren says. For him, Jones, and others, “doing church” in traditional and innovative ways is a form of theological reflection that leaves behind the fundamendalists’ need to make all religious propositions into pseudoscientific statements, to turn Genesis, for example, into a geology textbook.
Nice.
I give you two guesses as to where these traditional practices are going to lead people. [Hint: All roads lead to Rome] Well, let’s just say I agree with Roger Oakland on this one.
So yeah, I am pretty much left behind with all the other so called ignorant fundies who’re considered to be pseudo-scientists because they hold to the historical grammatical interpretation of Genesis. Hey, check it out. I even have these fundies blogrolled, go figure!!!
