GloboChrist: Introduction

[Previously I had mentioned that posting would begin Monday of this week, but we need to push back the schedule by just one week.]

This coming Monday marks the first engagement of Carl Raschke's new book entitled GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn.  Andrew Jones will be posting an engagement with chapters 1 and 2 called "Globopomo: The Planetery Postmodern Movement" and "De-Signs of the Time," respectively. 

In the meantime I wanted to post a very brief introduction to the series of engagements.  In Raschke's introduction (which can be read in its entirety on the Baker Academic website here), he states that the new post-Cold War setting has inspired those like Francis Fukuyama (i.e. the "end of history" thesis following Hegel and Kojève) and Thomas Friedman (see: The World is Flat) to proclaim that finally, the "rest of the world" will now be able to have its Englightment, and with it, its own Romantic forms of self-expression.  Coupled with this, Raschke follows Samuel Huntington's  "clash of civilizations" thesis but modifies this slightly that what we are really experiencing is a "clash of revelations" (p. 17).  That is, the rest of the world, which is very religious, seems to be clashing with the West insofar as the West is predominantly a secular culture.  Enter postmodernism which simultaneously "signals the arrival of a post-Western era" (p. 18).  It is not so much that the West is fading--as it is very much left its mark around the entire world--but that, "Just as the eclipse of ancient Rome was followed by the rise of a new Roman civilization that was predominantly Germanic but subsequently came to be called European, so the decline of the West will likely lead to a new world that remains Western in character, though no longer in name" (ibid).  Moving beyond the "personal relationship with Christ" of much of evangelical parlance, Raschke instead focuses on the "power of relationship, or the power of establishing, sustaining, and purposefully pursuing relationships  His is a power in this sense, not just an impersonal force.  The GloboChrist is a theological term we have coined to show how this power is manifesting itself amid the growing anxieties over what is happening under the impact of the force we call globalization and the politcal, cultural, and religious upheavels that arise in its wake" (p. 19).

If you haven't already been reading the book, please read along with us and read along with us in the forthcoming posts beginning Monday to see how Andrew Jones, Amos Yong, Jamie Gates, and Deirdre Brower-Latz engage with and interact with Raschke's newest offering.

"The postmodern moment is far more momentous than the cultural spleen and political partisanship that has defined much of Western discourse for nearly half a century" (p. 20). 

Comments

[Carl]

Thanks so much Andrew. I'm going to put up my own post in the next week or so to "engage" these comments as well as others that are coming forth on the book. I wanted to call your attention to my own version of Andrew appreciation day at the blog rhizone.typepad.com.
Carl