Peter Blum

This essay is a response to Struan Jacobs, “Recovering the Thought of Edward Shils,” which is an extended review of Adair-Toteff and Turner’s The Calling of Social Thought. It considers Edward Shils as a “stranger,” in the sense defined by Georg Simmel, relative to contemporary sociology. Christian Smith’s claim that American sociology is implicitly pursuing a “sacred project” is invoked, in contrast with Shils’ vision for consensual sociology. The expansion by CST to “Social Thought” as a calling (vocation), and its ties to science as understood by Polanyi, are strongly affirmed.

Taking a cue from one of the most (in)famous postmodern thinkers, Friedrich Nietzsche, the essays in this book put forth “experiments” in thought rather than arguments for fixed conclusions. Blum brings John Howard Yoder to the same table with Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, and provides a provocative glimpse of what the resulting conversation might look like. As Anne Lamott and others have recently insisted, faith is not the opposite of doubt, but of certainty. Blum’s essays explore some of our commonly held ways of talking about knowledge, meaning, commitment, and action. He suggests that some postmodern theoretical work, often dismissed or assumed to be anti-Christian, is well worth bringing into contemporary Anabaptist-Mennonite conversations about discipleship and corporate life. Part of the Polyglossia series, this book is intended for conversation among academics, ministers, and laypersons regarding knowledge, beliefs, and practices of the Christian faith.

The two sets of song lyrics with which I open these ruminations are separated in time by about a quarter of a century. They are separated in mood—or perhaps we should say “attitude”—by a distance not so easily measurable. One is a children’s song that has been sung in countless Bible School sessions since the late 1970s. The other is a recent song by a so-called “alternative” rock band, the sort of band whose compact discs are often decorated with stickers warning parents of “explicit” content, or in some cases have had alternate packaging in plain white in

My purpose in this essay is to share with you my experience, as a selfidentified Anabaptist Christian, of reading some so-called postmodern social thought, especially that of Michel Foucault. I would like to begin, however, with some comments on the problematic terms of my title. I have very little interest in clarifying exactly what postmodernism is , partly because I simply find that project uninteresting, and partly because I don’t believe postmodernism is anything, exactly. It seems fair, nonetheless, that we allow that there are postmodernists, inasmuch as there are a bunch of scholarly folk nowadays who refer to themselves