Happy Mother's Day!

Greetings to you all,

We enjoyed our class so much today. We had great discussion and several new people who joined us. Welcome to you.

Today we covered postmodernism in a very general way. We traced the origination of postmodernism to the events at the beginning of the century (World War I, the Holocaust and the failure of Germany's churches to rise and oppose it, etc.), and grappled with how we as believers live in a postmodern era. The characteristics of postmodernism (emphasis on tolerance, willingness to question authority, belief that there is no Truth (capital T), but many truths that are personal and individual, focus on personal experience and story, etc.) create both opportunity and tension for Christians today. There is opportunity because we as Christians can enter society's dialogue about important things, and we can declare that our perspective deserves to be listened to just as others should be heard. There is tension because we struggle when society is hypocritical about tolerance. On the one hand, we have listened to many who preach the need for others to tolerate all worldviews. On the other, we've heard them condemn those who disagree with the way some choose to live their lives. In other words, postmodernism's version of tolerance is often such that society tolerates only tolerant people.

As one person in our class said today, postmodernism is no way to run a country, and some ideas are better than others. That said, postmodernism offers us something -- it calls to mind the way Christ treated people when he interacted with those who lived their lives in a way that was inconsistent with Christ's call for us to love God, each other and ourselves. We should listen earnestly to people. We should not judge (as another member of our class reminded us), but should begin a conversation with all because while the church's version of tolerance is not necessarily going to be the same as someone who believes all lifestyles and all choices are equally viable, the church must continue to be Christ in this world and open its doors to everyone with a loving call to be in relationship with the world and with Christ.

Next week, we will continue our journey through postmodernism, but will also discuss Methodism and the quadrilateral (scripture, reason, tradition and experience). We believe this is an important component of our class in general because the quadrilateral is crucial to understanding who we are as Methodists and Christians in Conversation.

Finally, we still intend on discussing liberation theology and the Rev. Wright/Barack Obama debate. I found a great article about former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan's perspective on the issue, and thought you might like it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kerry-trueman/sunday-morning-segregatio_b_93029.html

Here is Peggy's article on the issue that I thought was enlightening.

http://www.peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=417

I hope you all are enjoying the class and the blog. Please e-mail us with comments or questions about the class. The link to this website is www.christiansinconversation.blogspot.com. We look forward to seeing you next Sunday.

Bryan and Deb