Letter from America

In America there is a turn of phrase which makes a play on a previous word to indicate mild - sometimes humorous - derision. So someone might say about breaking the speed limit 'Oh speeding, shmeeding'. The 'shm' sound is placed in front to give the sense of the previous word not being important or not being considered worthy of full attention. Pomo is the shorthand word used by some to indicate postmodernism.

Enough of preliminaries! This letter from America wants to say 'pomo - shmomo'. Recently I asked a suitably trendy professor of English at Yale University about postmodernism. He told me in no uncertain terms that postmodernism was passe. This caught me by surprise. Don't you read Derrida any more? I asked askance. Oh yes, he replied, maybe, but that's all out of date now. Hasn't been fashionable since the mid-90s. What's in now? I asked. Ethnicity, he said.

About which I'm still not quite sure what he means, other than that there is an apparent divergence in university syllabuses into lots of different subsets of subjects - like 'African American Literature' or 'Native American Art', etc.

What's really interesting, though, and made me stop in my tracks is the sweeping way he dismissed postmodernism. Having watched academic fashions a little more acutely since that conversation with the professor of English, I wonder whether he's right. Radical hermeneutics, extreme relativism, and the other markers of postmodern intellectual fashion seem now to be often given short shift in the universities.

That isn't to say that there might not be something called 'postmodernity' in popular culture. Perhaps there is. It can be a useful catchall label. But if we're arguing that the academy is influencing us all into being radical relatives, it seems to be not quite true.

It feels a bit like the way evangelicals responded to existentialism. For a while knowing what to do with Sartre was almost de rigeur in university evangelism. And it was so long after anyone other than Christian apologists was reading Sartre. Somehow the church has once again just got fashionable when the fashion has changed - or maybe anyway.

At least here's a starter for thought - pomo shmomo!

Josh Moody, New Haven, Connecticut

© Evangelicals Now - July 2001
Please consider supporting this ministry by subscribing.

• Request Free Sample

Main Articles

• France: religious clampdown
• Pearl Harbor Bomber
  The story of Mitsuo Fuchida, who led the attack
• Desperate!
  Notes from a YPF talk on relationships for young people
• Post-genocide Rwanda
  An interview with Phocas Ngendahayo, General Secretary of the IFES student ministry in Rwanda
• The Gospel of Jesus Christ: an evangelical celebration
• Cornhill goes north
  An interview with David Jackman and Hugh Palmer
• Monthly column on the arts
  God, the Devil & Bob
• Monthly column for youth leaders
  An appetite for fresh air ... and the gospel
• Monthly column on hymns and songs
  A text whose time has come?
• Christians and the new political landscape
• Letter from America
  Pomo Shmomo!
• Falling for foot & mouth
  A parable on the crisis in the countryside

Other articles

• The Incomparable Christ - A series of four videos by Dr John Stott, with study guides
• Pearl Harbor
• Great Salvation - Live worship from Huddersfield Christian Fellowship
• George Whitefield's Works
• Reveal
• Imp-licit preaching
• Them: Adventures with Extremists
• Growing for God
• A Living Sacrifice: the life story of Allen Yuan
• The Shape of Qumran Theology
• Renewing Biblical Interpretation
• Can we Pray for Revival?
• The Essential IVP Reference Collection
• 10 Plus - Ten Service Outlines for Church Leaders based on the Ten Commandments