Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

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(Johnson, 2004).
Contemporary new realties for the church are several. First, the initiative in global
evangelisation is passing to the churches in the developing world. Secondly, interest in
Eastern religions and Neo-Paganism has exploded in Western nations in recent years.
Lastly, the influx of many immigrants from the developing world into Western nations is
having an impact.
Postmodern Spiritual Hunger
Roland Benedikter is a member of the Institute for the History of Ideas and Research
on Democracy, Innsbruck, Austria. He did an extensive interview with Elizabeth Debold
of What Is Enlightenment Magazine, in June 2005. The result was one the most
insightful discussions about postmodern spirituality to date. Benedikter believes the
postmodern cultural wave hit full stride around 1970. Postmodernists Lyotard, Derrida,
Deleuze, Lacan and others headed this rebellion against what they perceived to be the
wrong ideologies and fixed systems that drove Western societies, and were suffocating
social life.
Benedikter suggests the postmoderns intended two cultural waves. The first, and to
date best known, was the deconstructionist phase. The second, and yet to develop in any
substantive form, was always intended to be the reconstructionist phase, in which the
postmoderns would build from the deconstructed ruins of modernity, a better Western
world. Benedikter also believes two additional cultural dynamics have been at work
during the same period. The first is the global renaissance of religion, especially since the
collapse of the Soviet Union; and the other is the development of postmodern ‘protospirituality,’
especially during late postmodernism, which he identifies as the period
c.1979-2001.
University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa