The Worship Mall: Contemporary Responses to Contemporary Culture. By BRYAN D. SPINKS.

Abstract

One of the most slippery terms in academic and even in popular discourse is that of postmodernity. Bryan Spinks addresses this problem with refreshing directness in his introduction. By so doing he does not banish the problem but instead makes it clear that any analysis involving this term requires great care in discerning its meaning. In theology alone, postmodernity is used as a means of both radically recasting or even abandoning the tradition and, conversely, embracing orthodoxy anew: George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, and John Milbank might be cited as different exemplars of the second approach. Spinks returns to this theme with much subtlety at various points in the rest of his analysis. He is well placed as an analyst of Christian worship and postmodern trends having spent much of his life in Britain and more recently having taught on the other side of the Atlantic, at Yale Divinity School. The European and North American experiences differ. As Spinks notes, the shopping mall had its origins in the USA. Similarly, market-based religion has found a home there. One street in the university sector of St. Louis has Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist churches next door and so cheek by jowl with each other. In Europe, however, in recent years, there has been increasingly talk of ‘post-denominational' Christianity.