Liquid Modernity by Zygmunt Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman (born in1925) is a Polish sociologist. He has resided in England since 1971 after leaving Poland. Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Leeds, Bauman is one of the world's most eminent social theorists writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity.

This is a lecture given in 2004. The context is a conference about supervision of students, but this essay gives an interesting and  succinct summary summary of Bauman's understanding of modernity and liquid modernity.

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Liquid Modernity by Zygmunt Bauman

Lecture on the ANSE-conference 2004 "Value dilemmas as a challenge in the practice and concepts of supervision and coaching" on May 7th 2004 in Leiden/The Netherlands

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Standing in front of you, I am humbled by your presence. You are the people who are actually making things happen, and I am the person who is talking about things happening. So I recognise your superiority as far as the ability to do things in practice is concerned, and I am not quite sure how much I can help you with my kind of expertise.

A nightmare

In fact I’d like to confess to you that another day I had a nightmare. I woke up covered with sweat. My nightmare was that I was a supervisor. And I was confronted with an incredible contradiction between intentions and the actual situation, an ambivalence which I couldn’t easily resolve. A situation not very different from the one which I confronted several times when I was teaching students at Leeds University and before that at Warsaw University. I was facing a dilemma because, like you, I had a vision of an ideal personality, the ideal to which my students should correspond. 

I wanted them to be inspired, to be creative and to stand on their own feet rather than to follow the dead letter of instructions. On the other hand I knew very well that if they really became as I told them they should be, they would probably fail their doctorate’s examination, because there would be someone sitting on the committee who would think that they were too original, too creative and too abnormal...

So it was a contradiction, quite a genuine contradiction. You have this idea of the ideal person. You would like to cultivate such an ideal person, but it might very well happen that the world in which these people will need to work and function is not hospitable for originality, boldness, courageousness, and irreverence with authorities.

You will probably still remember the name of Karl Marx. As he observed almost 200 years ago – and in this case, I think he was right – “people make history but not under conditions of their choice”. This means that you haven’t selected the world in which you work. And quite often there is actually a clash between what you want to achieve and what is possible.

MODERNITY IN CONTEXT - Lesslie Newbigin

I found this article by Bishop Newbigin, which is the opening chapter to "Lausanne Occasional Paper 27" (1996) here. It gives an interesting overview or summary of the context of modernity (the age of reason) and post-modenity. It also touches on Christian and Islamic engagement with 'reason.'

Chapter 1

MODERNITY IN CONTEXT 

by Lesslie Newbigin

In the following chapter, [On web-page] Bishop John Reid has drawn together some of the main insights of the conference on ‘Faith and Modernity’ convened by the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelisation in Uppsala, Sweden in the Summer of 1994. The full report of the papers given at that meeting deserves wide circulation and study, and I hope that the present work will lead readers to study the full report. As one of the participants said, ‘Modernity is perhaps the most serious challenge which Christianity has so far faced in its two thousand year history and it is urgently necessary that we understand it and how to respond to it’.

Perhaps the best way to say what we mean by the word ‘modernity’ and to identify its characteristic features is to look at it from the point of view of those societies for whom ‘modernisation’ is the contemporary programme. All over Africa, Asia and the Islands of the Pacific there are societies seeking to achieve ‘modernisation’, which is the replacement of traditional ways of thinking and of organising economic and political life by the ways developed in Western Europe and North America during the past two or three centuries.

And it is also easy to see that Christian missionaries, by introducing western styles of education, medical care, agriculture and industry, have been among the main agents of world-wide modernisation. Modernity, in other words, is not an enemy that has attacked Christendom from without; it is a development within Christendom which we have exported to the rest of the world. If, as we must, we now recognise it as an enemy, we must search our own history to find out where we took a wrong turn. It also means that Christians of the western world have a special responsibility in this regard.

It is common among students of the history of ideas to date the rise of modernity from that century which called itself the ‘Age of Reason’. (1) Here ‘reason’ was invoked as a contrast to ‘tradition’ and ‘revelation’. To understand the power of this appeal to ‘reason’, one must remember two things. One is the memory of the religious wars of the 17th century. For most of that century Europe had been soaked in the blood of Christians fighting each other in the name of divine revelation understood through different traditions. There was a deep revulsion from the fanaticism and intolerance of those who claimed to be representing God. The other new fact was the birth and development of the new science and of what seemed to be a more reliable avenue to truth than those offered by the warring factions of Christianity.

Could this be the future of Church as we know it?

The Western church still puts a huge amount of effort into its central programmes, particularly the Sunday Worship Service. Yet the question needs to be asked why we do that. If our calling is to go and live out the good news, sharing our lives in our neighbourhoods building friendships, being community -  then why do we expect that in a post-Christian world, that bringing people to a big event in a building is the 'core' activity?

What does it mean to live as 'families' on mission? To be communities of disciples that connect deeply with the many who have a spiritual hunger but are deeply suspicious of 'religion.'

This is a cool video - the story of a worship leader who began asking deep questions ... 



Source:  http://www.thedesertbloomsproject.com

"And the Year is ...2020!"

This was an article I wrote for a panel discussion back in 2007. We were imagining the trends and the changes that might be emerging around us. Ridiculous, at one level, because the future always surprises us when it does arrive! But it was a helpful exercise in learning to observe and interpret more carefully what is happening around you. I wonder what would you add or subtract to this list? I think if I were re-writing it now, almost eight years on, I'd add in something about:

- The 'inter-culturalisation' of the Aussie church.

- An increase in many challenging and varied shapes and expressions of Kingdom community.

- A healthier fusion of proclamation and action.

- The rise of a more contemplative mainstream spirituality.

- An increasing ability to engage diversity without abandoning one's own framework.

- The return to a form of  local parish community and neighbourhood.

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"And the Year is ...2020!"

OK! I admit it; I love Dr Who! I just love the idea that I can hop into the Tardis and instantly jump into the future ten thousand years or even a leisurely ten million years or so. ‘Trouble is that that’s easy compared with gazing a measly TEN years forward!

Last year, I was invited to be part of a panel discussion given the topic: “What will Church be like in 2020.” That’s a tough one! I’ll be getting close to retirement! Hopefully Collingwood will still be getting the ‘wobbles in September! The Olympics will be on! There will be a U.S. Presidential election. But what will be happening in our so-called ‘post-Christian’ western world? I wonder what we dream God will be doing? Here’s some of my wonderings: 

1. Twenty-Four Seven Discipleship 

The church of 2020 will have realized that powerful testimony comes from personal transformation! They will realize that our focus should not be about programs, but principles. As we live as disciples ‘obeying all I have commanded you’ so we incarnate the Gospel into our world. The church of 2020 will not focus on getting the vision and strategy right; and making the people fit into it. Rather they will understand that obedient consistent ‘holy’ living will mark a ‘culture’ that fascinates people to faith.

Friday 22 April 2011

 ‘Boarded an A380 Airbus – interestingly at a distance they look smaller than the old jumbo Jet – probably because they don’t have the camel’s hump nose - but actually they are much bigger, a double-decker plane in fact.

I was seated next to Angela and Steve, a coupe in their early sixties from rural Victoria off to New York for a two-week holiday. “First time we’ve done anything like this.” They asked me what I was doing in Florida – It made me think -  How do you explain church planting to people who are not church goers? I said I was going to a conference about starting new churches.   “More churches? I thought no one was going to church much any more,” responded Steve.  “Our kids went to the local church children’s club sometimes when they were in primary school, but as they got older , there are so many things they can get sign up for...” said Angela.

They asked me how come I was attended. As I replied that I was a minister with an interest in learning about how churches can serve their communities, they exchanged that uneasy glance people sometime do when priests or pastors are identified and there was an awkward silence for a just moment. “Well, I hope it goes well for you, and good luck!” grinned Steve.

Some time later I looked at the little LCD screen that tells you about the route information. It informed me that the temperature around us was minus 51 Celsius; there were 12,000 kilometres still to go, and we were flying a dizzying  10 kilometres above sea level and hurtling forward at about 600K per hour.

Yet everything around me was as warm, still and peaceful as it was when we were on the tarmac. The lights were dimmed and drinks were being served. I wondered how we would all feel if the Captain could flick a switch and instantly make the whole fuselage translucent!

It’s just so hard for us as passengers to picture ourselves being in a thin metal shell at the very edges of space, hurtling six times faster than a speeding car and two kilometres above Mount Everest in bitter cold. The soft seating, mood lighting, diligent cabin staff and comforting entertainment system mean we are totally oblivious to our real location.

We in the western church have long left the comforting safety of the Christian era - but we are oblivious to it! Cocooned in our ‘cabin’ its hard to really believe that it’s all changed out there – but it has. Not so much in the non–western contexts but certainly in our western world. The Steves and the Angelas and their adult children don’t feel any antagonism towards us – just a mild bewilderment.

I recently heard Sarah Deutscher (Red Network) share from a study shows that only 15% of Aussies can connect with the things we do as ‘church’ and ‘outreach’ – That means 85% of Aussies wouldn’t ‘get it.’ We’re flying at a totally different altitude now! We need a different approach.

It can be difficult to imagine new realities. With the exception of the Great Wall of China, the Maginot Line was the greatest system of permanent fortification ever built, and probably the last. The broad purpose of the Line was to halt an invasion long enough for the French Army to fully mobilize, and then act as a base from which to conduct a counteroffensive. It was such an impressive piece of construction that dignitaries from around the world visited it.

However, the Maginot Line had two major failings – it was obviously not mobile and it assumed that the Ardennes was impenetrable. Any attack that could get around it would leave it floundering like a beached whale. Blitzkrieg was the means by which the enemy simply went around the whole Line. The speed with which Germany attacked France and Belgium in May 1940 completely isolated all the forts.

The German Army attacked through the Ardennes – such an attack was believed to be impossible by the French. One million men and 1,500 tanks crossed the seemingly impenetrable forests in the Ardennes. Once the Maginot Line had been isolated it had little military importance. One in seven French divisions was a fortress division - so the Maginot Line took out 15% of the French Army.

“... from Issachar, men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do—200 chiefs, with all their relatives under their command...”  (1 Chron 12: 32 NIV)