Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Who ARE You?

I have taken this quiz a zillion times, and I always find myself labeled Emergent/Postmodern, which for the life of me I cannot figure out. I guess it's all pretty accurate, except for the (poorly punctuated) sentence that reads, "You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well."

The fact that it literally pains me to see that comma in the place of the semicolon in the above sentence -- an anguish-inducing problem on a par with the repeated misuse of "apostrophe s" on the internet -- should be a clue. I am hopelessly in love with older forms of church, and I think that we in the postmodern world would do well to educate ourselves on the their significance and timeless relevance before we lose something precious. I do not eschew contemporary innovations (except for some of what is, oddly enough, identified as music), but there seems to be a bad case of either-or going around today, no doubt fueled by a media that seems incapable of nuance and educates us accordingly.

Now that I think of it, the implications that spirituality is somehow a function and/or progenitor of the emergent/postmodern movement and that relationship and dialogue are more contemporary than crusades and altar calls are also rather baffling. Spirituality, relationship, dialogue -- all have been honed in the ancient practices of lectio divina and spiritual direction, practices which constitute major elements of my own religious life. The tent revival crusade and altar call, rather than the practices of dialogue and relationship, constitute modern developments; postmodern practices have leapfrogged back over them to recover rather than to create anew.

Hmmm. Maybe I am emergent/postmodern after all ~ in the third century sense.

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You scored as Emergent/Postmodern, You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern

75%

Neo orthodox

71%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

71%

Roman Catholic

68%

Classical Liberal

64%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

39%

Modern Liberal

32%

Reformed Evangelical

21%

Fundamentalist

0%

Try this link.
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4 comments:

Cynthia said...

I tried to take the quiz, but the link directed me back to the Blogger dashboard. With my eclectic spiritual life, it would be interesting to see how I get classified.

Lori said...

Well shut my mouth and butter the biscuits! I'm a neo-orthodox! And I have no idea what that means.

Lisa :-] said...

I am 82% emergent/postmodern...LOL! does that mean YOU are an agnostic????

Cynthia said...

Finally got back to the quiz, and I came out emergent/postmodern. It's not quite a fit.