{"id":936,"date":"2006-04-28T05:07:42","date_gmt":"2006-04-28T05:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html"},"modified":"2006-04-28T05:07:42","modified_gmt":"2006-04-28T05:07:42","slug":"jka-smith-on-postmodernism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html","title":{"rendered":"JKA Smith on Postmodernism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jamie KA Smith has a new, readable, useful book on postmodernity called <em>Who&#8217;s Afraid of Postmodernism?<\/em>. I want to recommend as the best interface of evangelical concerns and traditional theology with postmodernism. It is not as saucy or philosophical as Caputo&#8217;s new book, but it is more theological and more aimed at evangelicals who are nervous about postmodernism.<!--more|inline--><br \/>\nSmith debunks three major mistakes being made by critics: that Derrida really means everything is only text (he means in fact &#8220;interpretation&#8221;); that Lyotard really meant death to all metanarratives (he meant death to the ability to prove them from an independent neutral base); and that Foucault meant that power is knowledge (well, he was close to this).<br \/>\nTwo points: Smith argues that each of these scholars empower the witness of the Christian gospel. By undercutting modernity, they provide an opportunity for Christians to step in with a faith that is in search of understanding.<br \/>\nAnd, Smith contends (and I think he needs to make a better, clearer case for this) that postmodernism creates a need for Christianity to return to an ancient-future faith. His central thesis is that much of low-church evangelicalism reflects modernity with its exaggerated individualism and that tradition and ecclesiology flow naturally from the postmodern turn. Well, he&#8217;s got lots of good points and I hope you read this book too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jamie KA Smith has a new, readable, useful book on postmodernity called Who&#8217;s Afraid of Postmodernism?. I want to recommend as the best interface of evangelical concerns and traditional theology with postmodernism. It is not as saucy or philosophical as Caputo&#8217;s new book, but it is more theological and more aimed at evangelicals who are&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-emerging-movement"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>JKA Smith on Postmodernism - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"JKA Smith on Postmodernism - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jamie KA Smith has a new, readable, useful book on postmodernity called Who&#8217;s Afraid of Postmodernism?. I want to recommend as the best interface of evangelical concerns and traditional theology with postmodernism. It is not as saucy or philosophical as Caputo&#8217;s new book, but it is more theological and more aimed at evangelicals who are&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-28T05:07:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"JKA Smith on Postmodernism - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"JKA Smith on Postmodernism - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Jamie KA Smith has a new, readable, useful book on postmodernity called Who&#8217;s Afraid of Postmodernism?. 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It is not as saucy or philosophical as Caputo&#8217;s new book, but it is more theological and more aimed at evangelicals who are&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2006-04-28T05:07:42+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html","name":"JKA Smith on Postmodernism - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-04-28T05:07:42+00:00","dateModified":"2006-04-28T05:07:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/04\/jka-smith-on-postmodernism.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"JKA Smith on Postmodernism"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}