Postmodernism and Public Policy

Postmodernism and Public Policy shows how a postmodern Christianity can contribute positively to thinking about religious and cultural pluralism, and how this can give direction to the educational enterprise. It proposes ways of understanding sex, gender, and race that take diversity seriously without lapsing into a debilitating relativism that inhibits political action. Arguing for a shift from individualism to thinking of persons-in-community, it proposes that the world be organized from the bottom up in communities of communities, and spells out what this implies for the political and economic orders and the relationship between them. Cobb shows that formulations on all these topics can be coherently interconnected and he develops the implications of such thinking for some specific ethical and political issues that now trouble the United States, such as abortion, physician-assisted suicide, and homosexuality.

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Arguing that the reframing of Christianity within the system of a "constructive postmodernism," best articulated by Alfred North Whitehead, can and should lead to a theology that can usefully address matters of public policy, Cobb (Claremont School of Theology) discusses where such a philosophy leads. Clearly drawing a line between his philosophy and "deconstructive postmodernism," he argues that it necessary to recognize pluralism in a way that does not posit an absolute moral relativism. Cobb's pluralism contends that at the heart of pluralism is the recognition that differences among beliefs are more often complementary that contradictory. The implications of a postmodern Christianity for cultural diversity, public education, gender and sexuality, the economy, race, and class are sketched in later chapters. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)