Raschke adds another voice to the conversation on postmodernity and the church, which draws the reader deeper, demonstrating and attempting to comprehend the furthering complexity of the postmodern worldview. There is no simple or simplistic definition. Ironically, Raschke posits that we may be beyond postmodernity and into something like a “post-postmodern” era. Whether this helps or hinders our comprehension remains to be seen. Regardless, it remains subjective to define the philosophical era that we are currently standing in the midst of, because we cannot see or foresee with unfailing certainty. Therefore, Raschke gives the reader one more point of observation through the lens of this book.

GloboChrist is the third contribution in a series on the Church and Postmodern Culture, edited by James K. A. Smith. The thesis of GloboChrist stems from the “growing anxiety over … globalization and the political, cultural, and religious upheavals that arise in” the wake of twenty-first century postmodernity (19). Raschke summed this book with one of his critiques of fundamentalism; they seem to be “defending the gospel against the ‘heresy’ of postmodernism – as if postmodernism were a statement of faith” (156). The process that Raschke uses follows the patterns of decentralization, de-institution, and indigenization, through the biological metaphor of a rhizome type of a root. The bulk of his argument points to the growing conflict between Islam and Christianity, which stem from competing and conflicting “divine” revelation and eschatology. Raschke has not been shy about assailing all participants in the postmodern conversation, through the academic and prophetic challenges to what he sees as a naive or conservative hermeneutic of scripture.

Carl Raschke (PhD, Harvard University) is professor and chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Denver, where he has taught since 1984. In addition, he serves as an adjunct faculty member at Mars Hill Graduate School and is the author or editor of twenty books.

Raschke engages the tenets of Derrida with an affirmation that postmodernity is more than deconstruction. He confronts the arrogance of the Western Church and culture for the assumption of exporting ideologies. He concurs with Deleuze, who chides the universality of the signs of communication and he agrees with Wittgenstein’s approach to language and linguistic analysis. Contrary to the doomsday naysayers, Raschke posits that the spiritual emptiness of the post-Christian Europe landscape readily fosters an openness to the Christian message. Additionally, Raschke engages Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) several times in seemingly random places – thus following a truly postmodern format of writing.

Perhaps the most engaging conversation within this book is within the religious context of drawing parallels between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Raschke boils these differences down to a conflict of revelation between all of the children of Abraham. Ultimately, he points to the arrogance of Western Christianity as the weak-point of the argument. Raschke sees these culminating in the eschatological stance of Islam and Christianity, even through the Muslim’s expectation of the return of Christ (Premillennial Dispensationalism) and the return of the Mahdi, who will instruct and correct the errors of the Christianity and Judaism.

The concluding chapter has an academic disclaimer in its title, which seems to give Raschke permission to freely express his opinions without restraint. R. Scott Smith and John MacArthur take a few heavy hits as Raschke criticizes their worldview and McLaren is chided for having a Burger King form of Christianity. In closing, Raschke draws Bonhoeffer onto his side for support, finding comfort in his supposed postmodern and global postmodernity.

Reviewed by John R. Miller

This review originally published to the Pneuma Foundation In Depth Resources index February 28, 2009.

Publisher’s page: http://bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/globochrist/281540

Read the 2009 interview between Raschke and the Evangelical Philosophical Society: http://blog.epsociety.org/2009/01/interview-with-carl-raschke-globochrist.asp

Carl Raschke, The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), 235 pages.

Perhaps no other word is feared (or misunderstood) by evangelicals in the current theological vocabulary than postmodernism. Read most any evangelical Christian publication and you will read some article or editorial warning about the dangers of postmodernity. For good measure, the naysayers of postmodernism will throw in names such as “relativists” and “nihilists” when speaking of those who adhere to a postmodern way of thinking. Sadly, though, very few evangelicals have seriously and critically dealt with postmodernism and its consequences for theology and the church. The work of Stanley Grenz, John Franke, and Brian McLaren stand out as examples of evangelicals attempting to deal honestly with what postmodernity means for evangelical Christianity. Carl Raschke is another example, although he is by no means a newcomer to the conversation. His seminal work, The End of Theology, is believed to have started the postmodern debate within evangelicalism.¹ In The Next Reformation he continues his intelligent and thought provoking work in postmodern theology.

Raschke’s critique of evangelical theology is at times biting, but one senses a refreshing honesty and concern. The hypothesis of the entire book is that evangelicalism has bound itself too tightly to the modernist “isms,” including foundationalism, presuppositionalism, and common-sense realism. Raschke believes, and rightly so, that modernism is the spawn of the Enlightenment Project and that the idealism and extreme rationalism of that movement have failed and are passing away. On the horizon, or right here and now—depending on varying dates and definitions, postmodernism looms as the intellectual amniotic fluid of our time. Evangelicals, Raschke argues, have been down right resistant to the postmodern metamorphosis in thought, reacting the same way they did to liberalism and secular humanism. Raschke does believe that postmodernism is congenial with evangelicalism and can help the evangelical church stay true to its Reformation roots.

Carl Raschke (PhD, Harvard University) is professor and chair of the department of religious studies at the University of Denver, where he has taught since 1984. In addition, he serves as an adjunct faculty member at Mars Hill Graduate School and is the author or editor of twenty books.

For Raschke, the Reformation triune theology of sola fide, sola scriptura, and the priesthood of all believers (here worshippers) is best understood from the postmodern perspective. Faith is not based on reason or epistemology, as the post Enlightenment movement would have us believe. To the postmodern, faith “Shatters the idols of the age” (114). Faith is not a presupposition or a foundation, but the foundation. Out of this grows the concept of sola scriptura. Raschke is right to point out that evangelicals have too easily equated inerrancy with the Reformation doctrine of “by scripture alone.” A postmodern reading of this doctrine sees that the authority of scripture lies in the fact that it is promissory speech of the Almighty (135). The bible is true and authoritative because it is the word of God, not because it can be verified factually or historically as modernist liberals and fundamentalists like to think. If this is true—and we as Christians, particularly evangelical Christians, really believe it to be true—we will live it out. Postmodernism also provides the church the chance to actually implement the priesthood of all worshippers. Thinkers such as Michael Foucault tell us that modernism structures things hierarchically or vertically, while postmodernism views things relationally or horizontally (149). It is in this setting that all the church ministers to all the church and the world.