In this thesis the researcher has investigated which of the two concepts: believing before belonging or belonging before believing, is a more accountable perspective in regards to ministry in post-Christendom society. With the final stages of the modern period the power of hegemonic ideologies is coming to an end as people identify less with grand ideologies and more with subcultures related to technology and social and economic networks of different kinds. The post-Christendom phase has begun and is radically challenging Christendom notions of ministry. We have to assume that among post-Christians the familiarity with Christian concepts will fade as the decline of Christendom has meant that Christianity has been losing its status as a lingua franca, only to be understood in the long run, by those who are professing Christians. It is therefore important that the church will anticipate longer journeys towards faith and not move on to disciple new converts too quickly. Post- Christendom evangelization will consequently take longer, start further back and move more slowly. In the context of post-Christendom, knowledge of Christianity is rather limited and people need to come to an understanding of what Christianity entails. For those seekers, exploratory participation at first is safer than making a definite commitment. Postmodern society is also suspicious of institutions and eager to find whether Christian beliefs also work in practice and not only in theory. Therefore is belonging before believing very much necessary for seekers to test whether Christians live out in their communities what they claim to be true? / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D. Th. (Missiology)

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In 1988, Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser published an article entitled "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," arguing that this essay would provide a jumping point for discussion between feminisms and postmodernisms within academia. Within this essay, Nicholson and Fraser largely disavow a number of second wave feminist theories due to their essentialist and foundationalist underpinnings in favor of a set of postmodernist frameworks that might help feminist theorists overcome these epistemological impediments. A "postmodern feminism," Nicholson and Fraser claim, would become "the theoretical counterpart of a broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity, the sort of solidarity which is essential for overcoming the oppression of women" (35). Interpreting "Social Criticism" through a feminist cultural studies model in which texts are understood to be simultaneously constituted by and reflective of their own sociopolitical spaces, I argue that the construction of Nicholson and Fraser's "postmodern feminism" is, first and foremost, neither a postmodernist critique nor a means of overcoming the pitfalls of essentialism and foundationalism. Instead, the construction of this theoretical paradigm can be shown to be complicit with postfeminist discourses, wherein an implicitly patriarchal discourse of postmodernism is called upon to repair the deficiencies of feminisms, deficiencies that postmodernisms, in some ways, helped to bring into view. To provide a conceptual backing for these claims, I move toward an examination of mass culture, surveying the similarities between "Social Criticism" and the film What Women Want. Such a comparison, I suggest, facilitates a better understanding of how "Social Criticism" can be shown to be imbedded in a postfeminist narrative structure in which feminisms are relegated to a discursively subordinate gendered position in relation to postmodernisms. Finally, in what I find to be the most important aspect of this thesis' inquiry, I ask what it means to build a "broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity" by disavowing second wave feminisms in favor of postmodernisms. I conclude that, in using postmodernisms as a panacea for feminist theories, Nicholson and Fraser curtail what might have been a rigorous interrogation of and direct engagement with second wave feminist theories that would also attend to the phallogocentric underpinnings of postmodern theories. To underline the potential consequences, I turn to a set of televisual and filmic texts including Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and The Devil Wears Prada to gauge what their "postmodern feminism" might represent in practice rather than what it entails as philosophy. This juxtaposition of these two differently defined and yet overwhelmingly similar postmodern feminisms, I propose, underscores the potential that Nicholson and Fraser may have instituted a postmodern feminist methodology in which it is possible that feminisms might emerge not as discourses essential for "overcoming the oppression of women" but rather as discourses that can be critiqued into oblivion.

Ce mémoire explore comment Edward Albee peut être perçu comme un postmoderniste, s’appuyant sur une compréhension du postmodernisme formulée par Linda Hutcheon et le contexte américain pendant les longues années 1960 pour examiner de façon critique deux des premières pièces d’Albee. Les pièces en question, The Zoo Story (1959) et Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), dépeignent des personnages qui ne peuvent supporter la ligne floue entre les faits et la fiction de la condition postmoderne, où il n’y a pas de motifs ou de vérités incontestables. Le besoin désespéré de vivre dans la certitude absolue et l’assurance fait que les personnages nient la condition postmoderne, et s’engagent dans un processus d’oubli forcé de leur appréhension de la condition postmoderne et des différents événements qui les ont amenés à elle. Les personnages des deux pièces utilisent différents métarécits pour créer un sens et vivre leur vie avec l’illusion de la certitude complète. Le processus de l’oubli forcé sera déduit à travers les théories de la mémoire et de l’oubli tel que compris et expliqué par Jonathan K. Foster. Le mémoire démontre comment, en raison de leur cartographie de toute leur vie sur la base de différentes métanarrations, les personnages finissent par vivre d’une manière aliénée et inauthentique. L’état apathique et émasculé de leurs identités les font se livrer à des actes extrêmes de violence et de rage. Albee montre comment les identités de ses personnages sont compromises de différentes façons en subissant leur mort sociale. / This thesis explores how Edward Albee can be perceived as a postmodernist, relying on an understanding of postmodernism formulated by Linda Hutcheon and the American context during the long 1960s to critically scrutinize two of Albee’s early plays. The plays in question, The Zoo Story (1959) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), portray characters who cannot bear the blurred line between fact and fiction of the postmodern condition, wherein there are no unquestionable grounds or truths. The desperate need to live in absolute certainty and assurance makes characters deny the postmodern condition, and engage in a process of forced forgetfulness to forget about their apprehension of the postmodern condition and different events which brought them to it. The characters in both plays use different metanarratives to create meaning and live their lives with the illusion of complete certainty. The process of forced forgetfulness will be deduced through theories of memory and forgetting as understood and explained by Jonathan K. Foster. The thesis demonstrates how, due to them charting their entire lives on the basis of different metanarratives, characters end up living in an alienated and inauthentic manner. The apathetic and emasculated state of their identities make them indulge in extreme acts of violence and rage. Albee shows how identities of his characters get compromised in different ways by suffering their social death.

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