Tribes & configurations: postmodern church implications (1)

Let’s unpack the opening line from my previous entry: “Pentecost weekend 2007: a postmodern tribal event if there ever was one!” Tribes in the Australian bush or deepest, darkest Africa okay, but occidental postmodern tribes?!

Postmodern tribes are micro-societies, says Anne-Marie Green*, formed around interest based cultures, that transcend class, social status and even age.
For example, a person may belong to a musical tribe, and silently proclaims that by a particular label of clothes and other “badges” that the young person will wear and by which s/he identifies with her/his tribe.

A postmodern badge

(I had an oh-so-cool orange Led Zeppelin t-shirt that I acquired during a high school trip to the Jersey shore with my friends. I of course sported until it had gone well past dust cloth status!)

Tribal Configurations
According to Bernard Cova and Marco Roncaglio, postmodern tribal groupings are composed of the individual, the nucleus or core group and occasional huge gatherings that stimulate the imagination.**


Postmodern tribal social configurations have tremendous implications for the forms that postmodern ekklesia (church) could or should or will take. More about at the end of the month… once I return from vacation!

* Anne-Marie Green, Des jeunes et des musiques: Rock, Rap, Techno… (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997). Professor Green teaches sociology at the Paris X University and musicology at Paris IV.
** Adapted from Bernard Cova and Marco Roncalglio, “Repérer et soutenir des tribus de consommateurs ?” Décisions Marketing, no.16 (janvier-avril 1999).