An Introduction to Postmodern Liturgy
/We will rarely do this, but I felt like the Introductory podcast was a really good intro an explanation of everything Postmodern Liturgy is about so I have decided to post the transcript here.
In a journal entry in 1852, Søren Kierkegaard anticipated a coming conflict which would separate him from the environment in which he had spent his entire life. On one hand he had grown up in, and been completely dedicated to, the church; on the other, he perceived the church to be far adrift from what the New Testament outlines as Christianity. For Kierkegaard, the New Testament, and more specifically the life of Christ, were the model for Christianity, but in his perception, “Christendom” had “only been made possible by making Christianity into something totally different from what it is in the N.T.” However, his conflict was far more personal than a fading dedication to an institution. Anticipating a “collision” with his life-long pastor he wrote:
“Just think of the emotional conflict. There is a man I love with all my heart–but I know that if I present what Christianity is essentially he will be furious, will become my enemy. And Christianity commits me to it.”
The most striking aspect of this journal entry is that Kierkegaard wrote it under a heading which references Luke 14:26: “He who does not hate father and mother for my sake etc. is not worthy of me.”
I’m Anthony Mako.
Welcome to Postmodern Liturgy.
What you just heard was the first two paragraphs of my Master’s thesis on Søren Kierkegaard’s “Attack on Christendom.” I think you will see that it aligns well with this “thing” I would like to introduce to you…
Postmodern Liturgy is an idea that has been bouncing around in my head for quite some time now. In this introduction episode I would love to lay out the scope of this new platform and basically run you through everything you can expect from it as we begin.
The basic premise of everything related to Postmodern Liturgy is this:
Deconstruction seems to be very popular right now. Rightfully so. I love deconstruction. In fact, I could probably say that Postmodernism/Postmodern Theology and deconstruction was my salvation.
But, while I see a lot of avenues for help in deconstruction, I see far less offering spiritual formation and growth from a postmodern perspective. In increasingly tense times, it seems like anyone who has doubts, odd thoughts, or questions faces a large amount of pressure to either keep those thoughts to themselves or get out. It appears that most people are content to throw everything out as they walk out. From what I have experienced in church, it’s hard to not consider that a reasonable response.
It’s just, I strongly believe there is another way. In fact, as I have reflected back on my seminary experience, it’s possible that the only reason I went was to find out whether my perspective was “weird” or not. In many ways it was my final attempt. After intense study, the answer I got was, “keep going.”
See here’s the problem. Christianity in North America, and other Westernized areas of the world, has become so intertwined with other movements making it virtually indistinguishable from those other movements themselves. Let me give you some quick examples: Political Rhetoric, Colonialism, American Exceptionalism, Capitalism…that’s just to name a few. In the end, rejection, doubts about, or questions about anyone of these things appear to be a rejection of Christianity.
The funny thing is, a lot of what we see as Christianity today is, at most, 300 years old and probably way more like less than 100 years old in America.
Postmodernism, in general, is a critique of that time period, AKA. “the modern era.” Often it looks before that era as much as it looks ahead of it. This is precisely why Postmodernism is such a helpful tool in the “prescribed burn” of the overgrown underbrush of modern Christianity.
So, Postmodern Liturgy is my attempt to do just that and to connect with others who resonate with that journey.
Hopefully the details of all that can be laid out over the next 100 years of content I hope to create for this experience. In this intro I wanted to just share the details of the mechanism for delivery.
Let me start with this podcast. The Postmodern Liturgy podcast will be a weekly experiential podcast based around the liturgical readings for the week. I will offer prayers, all the readings for the following Sunday, mindfulness practices and some reflections on those readings. It will also have all original music to supplement the time of reflection and perhaps many other things. I hope it is a great way to approach the liturgical topic for the week from a non-traditional lens, but also, it will be published the Monday before the Sunday it addresses. For the record, this introduction is only a little like what the weekly podcast will be like. The weekly podcast will begin the week after Easter because I think Lent and Holy week are drenched in liturgical resources, but they drop off very quickly after. So, the weekly podcast will begin April 22. Earth Day!
We also have a blog. I say we because I hope to engage other voices on this platform. For now, I am thrilled that my good friend Jake Reber will be a large contributor to Postmodern Liturgy. Jake is finishing up, meaning he is ABD, a doctorate in English at Buffalo. Interestingly enough, Jake and I grew up in similar ways, we both went to the same Evangelical Christian university and then we went in seemingly opposite directions to pursue different disciplines. It has been fascinating to see that we have ended up in very similar positions; mine found through the lens of seminary and study in Christian History, Postmodern Theology and Eco-theology and his found through English and Continental Philosophy.
We haven’t established a publishing schedule yet but there will certainly be at least one post a week on topics somehow related to the title of the site.
Next, I want to just say, I really believe in this work, it is going to take a ton of time and so I would love to ask for your support, if you are able. I think we have developed a good system of benefits for supporters. The podcast and the blog will always be open to everyone but we’ve also established a Patreon at patreon.com/postmodernliturgy. You can also find a link on the supporter page at postmodernliturgy.com.
Here is a quick rundown of benefits at each supporter tier.
If you support at $2 or more a month, you will show your support for our work and get a bi-monthly email with media recommendations, like music, video and book recommendations, that relate to our work.
At $5 or more for month you will get monthly access to a download of all the original music created for Postmodern Liturgy.
At $10 or more a month you will have access to a separate blog I have created for worship planners. I have been a worship leader for over 15 years, but I always try to think outside the box and intentionally plan worship as a fully connected experience. On this blog I will share ideas for the week, which will be helpful if your community follows the church calendar, general thoughts about worship, exploration of the theology behind certain worship songs, and practical tips related to music, planning and production.
We also have higher levels of monthly support which offer substantial discounts on all services and products found on postmodernliturgy.com, and anything that is added as we have ideas for content.
To highlight one service:
For the last 8 years I have worked in higher education. I have found that direct mentoring is the most effective way to wrestle with themes like the ones this site will address. It also seems to be the best way to teach theology and worship in order to directly address specific areas of growth in individuals. So, if you are interested in direct mentoring on themes related to this site, you can find ways to receive that (perhaps through a regular phone call, or video chat, or even in person if possible) on our experiences/services page. My areas of specialization are: Spiritual Direction related to deconstruction/Postmodern theology, worship, eco-theology (creation care), theology and music. Jake is a phenomenal writer and deeply knowledgable in Postmodern ideas and writing.
In the end, this entire structure is meant to simply allow us to work in the areas we feel particularly skilled in while offering meaningful experiences and growth to you all. It absolutely is an attempt to break outside traditional structures and focus on our particular vocations specifically in order to fill what we see as an under-addressed hole in Spiritual Formation. It’s sort of a pipe dream but it is built upon so many deep conversations I have had with people that have seemed to have some impact.
If you have made it this far, thank you so much for letting me outline the start of postmodern liturgy. I have a lot of plans for content, but really have no idea what sort of community will develop out of this. But, I am very excited to see whatever it may become.
As I said, this intro isn’t all that much like what the podcast will be when it starts on April 22…Doubting Thomas week, how perfect…but I would like to leave you with a small reflection which will be similar to what the podcast will be.
To begin, a reading from Luke 4:1-13, which was a reading for Ash Wednesday and aligns well with our meditation in the season of Lent:
[Luke 4:1-13]
I don’t know if you are like me but when I read a passage of scripture I just can’t wait to find the un-obvious meaning. Sometimes that makes me miss something obvious, but most of the time I find a meaning that is far deeper than whatever I assumed a passage to be about.
For a lot of my life I basically understood this passage to be about resisting temptation from the Devil. As in, look how strong Jesus was; he didn’t do the wrong thing and chose the right thing. My takeaway was essentially that I will constantly be tempted to do wrong, or evil thing and God can help me resist that temptation.
Look at all the imagery that pushes us in that direction.
Jesus is led into the wilderness…oh no, not the wilderness, it’s scary out there…
Where he encounters the Devil. I have no idea what you picture, especially since scripture doesn’t really give us anything to picture when it comes to “The Devil,” but I doubt it’s good.
So at this point, whatever the devil says to do it bad, no thought needed.
Here’s the reason I don’t think this passage is about resisting objectively bad actions and it’s about something slightly different.
In scripture, the wilderness is never a bad place. It fact it is basically the best place. Not because it is comfortable but because in the wilderness we are reliant upon God to provide what is needed and we are unable to provide for ourselves. If I had a dollar for every time God has called someone into the wilderness, I wouldn’t have had to lay out our supporter tiers to you. The wilderness is good, especially because of what happens there.
If you look back at the three temptations, you may notice, with the presumption that Jesus is God, none of them are “bad.” Well, they aren’t objectively bad, they are just contextually negative actions.
It seems important to note that, in Greek, there is a difference for how the two characters in this story are referred to. The phrase translated “the devil” is not a title or a noun like in the case of Jesus. It is a descriptor or adjective which means, false accuser or slanderer. With this point I am not making a statement about the realness of the Devil. If I were, I would definitely do a lot more work to support that claim with evidence. I just think the difference helps with the overall point of this passage.
Jesus is essentially tempted with truth here. You are divine, be divine. This past week I have enjoyed reflecting on this passage as a sort of cosmic battle between Jesus’ divinity and Jesus’ humanity. For the sake of avoiding heresy, I should be clear that I am not suggesting that Jesus’ divinity and Jesus’ humanity are two separate spheres. I just think it is a helpful thought experiment to arrive at a take away from this passage.
What happens here is that Jesus rejects the privilege of divinity in order to remain true to his incarnation. Why does that matter?
Because in lent we run the risk of conflating two ideas.
The first is “from dust you came and to dust you will return” which is a reminder of our mortality and our humanity. The other is that this is a season of confession.
The improper conflation is: we confess the sin of being human.
In this passage Jesus rejects the temptations, which are at least aligned with divinity, in order to continue the journey that many others in scripture and many of us are on, The journey into wilderness, which is where the refinement process becomes clear as we rely on God for what we need instead of on our own self-deprication. To put it a different way, often times we need to reject the temptation of what some would call an objective truth in order to arrive at something which could be called a contextual truth. Many actions are inherently negative, I’ll share abuse as an example. However, I would argue that Lent isn’t as much about the obvious task of avoiding inherently negative behavior as it is about understanding oneself in relation to God. After all, bread is not bad. Lent is a season of wilderness meant to bring us back to our source, as it was for the people of Israel wandering in the desert and as it was for the temptation of Jesus.
So, in this season I hope you will rise above the temptation to simply remove bad behavior and walk into the wilderness, into creation to meet with the source of everything.
Before the end of this into, I would love to share all the ways you can connect with Postmodern Liturgy. By the way, the main reason I wanted to start with this intro was because I don’t want to ask for all of this connection and support every week.
The main landing place for all our content is postmodernliturgy.com.
To connect with us you can certainly leave comments on Postmodern Liturgy but you can also find us at facebook.com/postmodernliturgy, on Twitter we are @pmliturgy, and on Instagram we are @postmodernliturgy.
Don’t forget, from a podcast perspective, it is always really helpful if you subscribe to and rate and review the podcast in your favorite podcast app and finally if you are able, please consider visiting patreon.com/postmodernliturgy to become a supporter and continue to check out the services offered on our website.
Thank you all so much for listening!
And always enjoy the tension!
