Podcast #109: Postmodern Polygamy

16 August 7, 2016 by

109_finaIn this episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors, we begin by being reminded of how many babies have “slid out of vaginas” since we’ve been born, and we then compare comic book fans to Trump voters. We take a helpful call with tips for how Jason can write a bestseller, and then spend way more time than expected discussing the relation between postmodernism and man-buns. We explore the issue of how good an actor Bradley Cooper must be to have to convince Republicans that he’s not actually that sniper guy who died, and then weigh in on Utah’s newest Polygamy and Incest Society. Jason’s bieber has to do with inner compasses, while Christian is biebered by Vegas’s ladies of the night.

Also, sorry for not finishing Christian’s Vegas story after the break. #Alcohol

16 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  1. Post modernism, like universalism, is not compatible with Catholic Christianity. It’s crazy to me that Jason ruined his life for catholicism and then develops his theology to fit with liberal pseudo Protestants and extreme left biblical scholars. It’s sort of false advertising to pretend to be Catholic but only advance ideas that directly contradict said churches teaching. Just bite the wishy-washy bullet and declare for free agency.

    http://www.mark-shea.com/connecting.html

    This podcast was really enjoyable. looking forward to Jason’s new book

    I appreciate Christians point on zombie partisanship. How can it be that so many people want to support Donald trump?!? A man so clearly unfit for political office. It’s creepy

  3. Rooting for you Jason Stellman! But I think you’re fucking up 😉

    I know the guys who brought you over probably go nuts for Aquinas and Latin mass. But if thats not your jam, the Church has 2k years of intelligent stuff to say besides that. You should look at some of OUR stuff every once in a while for insights. There is a space for everyone. But you won’t find that space if you’re looking outside the Church

  4. Well, we agree on something. The current two party system is broken. At a minimum, there should be four, I think, something to the right of Republicans and something to the left of Democrats. Or we should change to proportional representation where each party will win a seat in the House based on popular vote share.

    That would at least ensure that you’re not just throwing your vote away with a ballot for the Greens or Libertarians and that your voice would be represented in Congress.

    Or we could just go with my mostly sarcastic Congress-Duty idea where every registered voter that passes a basic psychological screening is in a pool from which a computer randomly selects your name for a single term.

  5. There is a system where people get to rank candidates from 1st to last. If your first pick loses the second choice inherits the vote. That way you can vote for who you want but can also slot in the lesser of 2 evils vote at number 2. This system would have stopped Donald Trump from ever getting the nod in a crowded field. It would also give room for more than 2 options even within the same party

  6. Kenneth,

    “You should look at some of OUR stuff every once in a while for insights.”

    Like the pope? Oh wait. . . .

  8. A view from academic philosophy… to muddy the waters.

    I think it’s hard to place contemporary fundamentalist Christianity in terms of modern/postmodern because there’s some crossover. If you take Habermas’ approach, you would place the fundie evangelical crowd in premodern times since there’s an emphasis on hierarchical power structures and normative claims based on “because I said so” reasoning rather than rational dialogue and consensus building. As far as authority and who gets to tell the story, there’s no question that the church is premodern.

    However, there is this feature in many versions of modernism where there’s a faith in the ability of clear reasoning and the structure of rationality itself to lead you to The Truth. So there’s this sense that if we’re all just thinking right we’ll all arrive at the same conclusions. There seem to be some elements of this in the fundie crowd where there are all these attempts to prove Biblical truths and persuade people that the Bible is scientific and verifiable. Contrast both of these with postmodernism which simply denies that there is a such thing as Truth with a capital T.

    The thing is, I don’t see these attempts at rational persuasion and “Bible science” as being a central part of the fundie conceptual framework. To me it seems like a marketing gimmick they’ve taken on – a “when in Rome” kind of thing. It’s like church leaders sat back and wondered why people weren’t coming to church, and they observed that people were playing the rational game. So they were like “oh, we can do that too if it will make them come to church (and tithe).” But then that’s mistaking an approach to the world with a game people might play. And it’s intellectually dishonest because the intention is just to get your hook in people and then immediately return to your hierarchical authoritarian ways.

  9. Interesting analysis, Rachel. I used to insist as a PCA pastor that Reformed theology was premodern, mainly because the reformers drank deeply from the wells of the early church fathers.

    The interesting question (for me) is what Christianity would look like if it drank from postmodern cisterns. And I am not convinced the early emergent guys were really doing it, either. Standing as they were above history and sovereignly curating a mixed-bag type of worship (we’ll take this from the Catholics and this from the charismatics, etc.), it seemed more modern and Cartesian than anything, at least to me.

  11. I think I’ve posted this conversation between Peter Rollins and Lawrence Krauss on here a couple times before, but it’s the only really good dialogue I have found between a “new atheist” and a liberal Christian. If you’ve got an hour, watch/listen to it. I think it’s cool that they seem to agree on a lot.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdRH6LlbK_g

  12. This is where the christian says

    “no, no, no, I only say things that sound christian but I’m not actually believing any of it! I’m just like you!”

    And Lawrence responds

    “Then why the hell are we talking?”

    Paraphrased…. But pretty sure its accurate

  13. Rachel,

    The thing is, I don’t see these attempts at rational persuasion and “Bible science” as being a central part of the fundie conceptual framework. To me it seems like a marketing gimmick they’ve taken on – a “when in Rome” kind of thing. It’s like church leaders sat back and wondered why people weren’t coming to church, and they observed that people were playing the rational game. So they were like “oh, we can do that too if it will make them come to church (and tithe).” But then that’s mistaking an approach to the world with a game people might play. And it’s intellectually dishonest because the intention is just to get your hook in people and then immediately return to your hierarchical authoritarian ways.

    Its actually just the opposite. Christians have always played the rational game. As have Muslims and Jews for that matter. The Church actually condemned the idea that faith was blind not as a response to intellectual discourse, but to post modernism! Its the idea that there isn’t any truth that Christianity finds offensive, not “playing the rational game”. Secularism, relativism, postmodernism, and blind faith have been consistently condemned even by the second Vatican Council which is notoriously weak and wishy washy.

  14. Paul Tillich makes an interesting move in the postmodern direction but I read his stuff a long time ago so I don’t remember it all that well. What really struck me at the time was this idea of his that the job of the evangelist is to reinterpret and reapply the kernel of truth found in the Bible to make it relevant to the current historical and cultural time frame. This idea seems like it falls somewhere between the authoritarian fundamentalist approach and postmodernism in that it’s neither one single infallible metanarrative nor a diverse set of local narratives. Instead it’s something like different historical period give rise to different concerns and questions, and the job of theology is to answer those questions in a meaningful way. Which means the answers will not look identical in all cases. And into that territory the church of my childhood will not tread. And also, he defines faith as a psychological state rather than an epistemological state, and I think most evangelical churches wouldn’t accept that.

  15. But I don’t think Christians have always played the rational game in a number of ways. You can’t be both authoritarian and also invested in building consensus through reason. If I don’t want you to eat pork because you have no access to refrigeration and eating unrefrigerated pork may well kill you and I’m taking the rational approach I’ll explain that to you and discuss it until we reach agreement. If I’m taking the authoritarian approach I just strike you dead and that’s the end of the story. Obviously that’s an extreme example, but that’s a central theme throughout the old and new testaments. To obey is better than sacrifice, etc. I don’t think it matters whether it’s the Bible or the pope or the pastor saying it. It is not for you to understand and accept as your truth – only to obey. In Habermas’ premodern/modern contrast I mentioned above, authoritarian versions of Christianity are pretty squarely planted in the premodern.

    And in the church I grew up in, faith is blind (aka the assurance of things not seen) and postmodernism is evidence of the depravity of the modern world. One is not a response to the other; it’s both/and.

  16. The church I grew up in framed this as “that was the old covenant, but this is the new covenant.” But the full-blown version of progressive revelation was not a part of this picture. The last verse of Revelation is the end and that’s all there is to it. This approach isn’t shared by all evangelical fundie churches, but I think it’s pretty common. A good test is to try advocating for women in leadership roles on the basis that God shared this revelation with you that the church should be more egalitarian and inclusive. The flushed faces and bulging veins of the male leadership will tell you what their stance is on progressive revelation.

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