By in large, the above blog title is how I would describe the Tulsa Workshop 2005 version. Leonard Sweet and Rubel Shelly spoke extensively about the impact of cultural change and how it demands the church to acquiesce.
Again, I wrestle through the question: In the never-ending conflict that is church and culture, who should transform whom? Should church acquiesce to every ripple in the stream of culture? Or should church be the salt and light that prompts transformation within culture?
To help understand the tension and the dominant view among Postmodern theologians, here is a paragraph from John York who, along with Rubel Shelly, authored The Jesus Proposal. This paragraph highlights for me the basis for change advocated by the Postmodern movement.
Though we sometimes protest conforming Christian faith to our culture, how do we escape the realization that God and Christ and our interpretations of Scripture and our pursuit of faith are inevitably conditioned by our circumstances? The answer is that we don't and can't escape them. Neither can we any longer pretend that our faith and our practices in a particular church are immune or that there was a time called "Bible times" that was immune. There never has been a time when some pristine form of Christian faith lived outside of such cultural reading.
The evolving postmodern passion among prominent voices will force many honest disciples to think, re-think and pray through this tension. It isn't enough to accept or deny the counsel of the voices solely because of "who they are."
