"Sh'want Shawn," she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Delightfully confused, he asked her for clarification.
"Sh'want Shawn!" she repeated emphatically, as if to say, "Why aren't you getting this?"
I smiled and translated. "She wants to watch Boy Meets World."
It must be frustrating to be two years old. You know exactly what you're saying, but people who are unfamiliar with your tendencies to refer to yourself in the third person, create bizarre contractions, and re-title TV shows with the name of your favorite character have no idea what you're talking about.
I'm not two years old, but I feel like this sometimes too. Especially when I try to express how I feel about current ecclesiological trends. Probably the closest I've come to saying what I mean took the form of an allegory, and the second sounds something like: "If I hear the phrase 'cultural relevancy' again, I'm going to vomit."
Obviously (and I could quote Cool Hand Luke here, but that line's a couple hundred miles away from the junk yard as it is), I've had a little trouble verbalizing my concerns. I like to think that the reservations I have about the new way of "doing church" stem from love, but it seems like I always come across sounding petty, ignorant, antagonistic, or all three. Even when I debate the issue internally, I constantly catch myself falling into ad hominem and slippery-slope arguments.
Why do I have such a hard time explaining myself? Is there really anything wrong with making the Church more user-friendly? Am I really just a selfish grump who stubbornly displays the kind of mean-spirited resistance church leaders expect from people three times my age? Am I the only one, aside from my wife and a few close friends, who even feels this way?
I found out recently that I am not. Last Monday afternoon, while browsing the "Christian Inspiration" section at Barnes & Noble, Brett McCracken's Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide caught my eye. I opened the book to the introduction and read the first paragraph, a quote from C.S. Lewis:
I have some definite views about the de-Christianizing of the Church. I believe that there are many accommodating preachers, and too many practitioners in the Church who are not believers. Jesus Christ did not say, "Go into all the world and tell the world that it is quite right." The Gospel is something completely different. In fact, it is directly opposed to the world.
- "Cross-Examination", God in the Dock:Essays on Theology and Ethics
I was interested. I perused the rest of the book for a few minutes - just long enough to get very interested, tucked it under my arm, picked out a Dr. Seuss for Mollie, and bought them both.
I finished reading Hipster Christianity in four days, which is pretty fast for me. It's well-written, easy to understand, and, although McCracken keeps his cheap shots and sarcasm under control in a way I would find almost impossible given this topic, it still manages to be quite funny.
But more than any of that, I am thankful for this book, because it has given voice to the thoughts and feelings I have had trouble communicating. It is scripturally grounded and extremely well-researched, and, aside from one or two uses of a minor curse word and (I think) a slight bent toward Calvinism, it's exactly what I would have written, had I the resources, clear focus, and talent of the author. That's not to say I didn't learn anything, though. As much as I have been affirmed through my reading, I have also been challenged.
The book is split into three parts. Parts One and Two reminded me of Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: mostly factual examination with very little evaluative opinion offered. Part One describes the history of the concept of "cool" or "hip", which McCracken traces back to the Enlightenment, and its interaction with Christianity, which more or less began in the 1960's and 70's with the "Jesus People", continued into the 80's and 90's with the practice of Christianizing the secular (Christian rock, Christian parody t-shirts, Christian romance novels, etc.), and in the last decade has for the most part flipped into a secularization of the Christian in an attempt to be more "culturally relevant".
Part Two systematically details what hipster Christians and hipster churches look like today. In general, most tend to be theologically concerned with missional practices over belief-oriented evangelicalism, politically liberal, environmentally concerned, and dedicated to art as a spiritual good in and of itself (regardless of meaning or utility).
In Part Three, McCracken abandons his role as researcher / reporter, and begins to take a hard look the issues we in the church face as a result of our obsession with "cool". The first major issue addressed is the emergence of "wannabe hip churches". In contrast to authentically hip churches, which form from the bottom up, in other words, a bunch of true Christian hipsters get together and decide to start a church, wannabes attempt to create a hipster-friendly environment from the top down, purposefully manufacturing styles and attitudes in order to appeal to the younger generation. McCracken argues that these types of churches can actually end up doing more harm than good, because twenty-first-century "cool kids" are almost instinctively cynical and can spot ulterior motives a mile away. The author quotes David Wells, who said in The Courage to be Protestant:
[T]he further irony is that the younger generations who are less impressed by whiz-bang technology, who often see through what is slick and glitzy, and who have been on the receiving end of enough marketing to nauseate them, are as likely to walk away from these oh-so-relevant churches as to walk into them.
Another problem with hipster Christianity, is that "cool" the way our culture defines it inherently possesses certain characteristics that are inconsistent with a Biblical lifestyle: selfish individualism, alienation, competition, pride and vanity, an exclusive focus on the present, rebellion, and a reduction of our ideas to the visual.
Finally, McCracken discusses the church's need to live out its truly, eternally cool nature, which transcends all fads, all generations, and all cultures, and quit undermining the body of Jesus Christ with what are ultimately very, very small matters.
Why is the church like this today? Have we so little confidence against the threat of postmodernity and other twenty-first-century challenges that we are regulated to this sorry state of reactionary irrelevance? Are we so uncertain about the future of Christianity and its appeal to the next generation that we don't know where else to turn but to the external cultural whims and waves that are churning all around us? Whatever happened to being confident that "He who began a good work in you will carry it on into completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. 1:6), or believing that "all things work together for, for those who are called according to His purpose" (Rom. 8:28)? Why are we frantically, desperately trying to monitor, copy, appropriate, and adjust to the culture in such a frightened and defensive manner, when we are repeatedly instructed in the Bible to have confidence that God is going to do what God is going to do, and it's going to be awesome?
- McCracken (220-221)
The logic of today's hipster Christianity, however, operates under [...] the assumption that to be truly relevant, Christianity must rethink everything and throw all its chips into the contextualization pot. This mind-set assumes no one will listen to us if we aren't loud and edgy; no one will take us seriously if we aren't conversant with culture; and no one will find Jesus interesting unless He is made to fit the particularities of the zeitgeist.
But this sort of "relevance" is defined chiefly and inextricably by the one thing Christianity resolutely defeats: impermanence. Things that are permanent are not faddish or fickle or trendy. They are solid. The word relevant, however, seems to imply temporality. I think we need to fess up to the truth that nothing temporal is really all that relevant at all, in the long run. True relevance lasts (234).
Christians, we have to think harder. We have minds, and we have to use them - not because it will appeal to the academic hipsters out there, but because in thinking about and considering God's world, we worship Him. And so even when something that might seem trivial, like ideas of "hip" and "cool," Christians need to think long and hard about what it all means for our objective on this planet. What does it mean that there is enough material to write a book about hipster Christianity? The discussion can start with that question.
It's not that I don't think Christianity is cool. On the contrary, I think it's the coolest thing ever. It is eternal and life-changing in a world of waste and quick fixes. It's the answer to everything and everyone. For wanderers, laborers, lovers, poets, slaves, villains, heroes, hipsters, movers, doers, and dancers (and everyone else under the sun), Jesus Christ is the answer. In a world of power-grabbing and war and insurgency, of institutions and rebellion and protest-movements, of blood and bombs and endless battles, where all hands are clamoring for control of some contested bit of land or love or liberty, Jesus Christ is the H-bomb force that levels it all and allows for the rebuilding of an eternal kingdom.
So yes, Christianity can be cool. It is cool. There's nothing wrong with pointing this out, or at least pointing out that we are not as stupid or uncool as previously thought. We can stand for some image maintenance. But we shouldn't obsess about fitting our image into the culturally acceptable or desirable ideal. Christianity's appeal comes not from culture, but from within - and the minute we start looking outside our own identity for affirmation about our relative relevance, we immediately begin to lose our cool (245-246).
Amen, amen, amen!
I'd like to thank Brett McCracken for writing Hipster Christianity. In an environment where questioning the "culturally relevant" push is next to questioning say, the practice of communion, it's been difficult for me to express exactly why the Christian hipster agenda has made me uncomfortable. I wish that every Christian college student, every pastor, and every other believer who has felt the pressure in recent years to be conformed "to the pattern of this world" (Romans 12:2) would get a copy of this book and at least consider some of the negative aspects of our increasingly "hip" ecclesiology.
Not only that, but I would like to thank him for challenging my paradigm as well. This might be surprising to those of you who just read my review, but I think reading Hipster Christianity has actually softened my heart toward hipsters and the people who wish they could be hipsters. Exploring the ends and outs of hipsterdom has broken down some of my prejudices by helping it seem less "other" and has brought me to the realization that I may not be as isolated from the rest of my generation as I thought. Granted, there are plenty of decidedly “unhip” things about me:
• I have a full-time job
• I vote Republican
• I respect Focus on the Family
• I don’t smoke, drink, cuss, or chew, and I don’t go with girls who do
• I could not give less of a crap about being “green”
• I hate artsy-fartsy stuff
• I will never, ever wear a V-neck or girl jeans
However, there are also some things many hipsters and I have in common:
• I blog
• I love Bob Dylan (the ultimate against “the man” hipster)
• I wrote a blog about Bob Dylan
• I’m fascinated with ancient church symbols and liturgical practices
• I love coffee (does it count if 95% of my consumption comes from a thermos?)
• I like talking about philosophy and theology
• I like my youth group materials to look stylish
• I love the outdoors (which, by the way, has nothing to do with being “green”)
• I enjoy Christian kitsch from the past with ironic nostalgia
• I genuinely appreciate art (again, nothing to do with “artsy fartsy”)
• There were a few things mentioned in this book I actually felt like checking out (hipster artists, websites, etc.)
Christian hipsters are my brothers and sisters, whether we agree on everything or not.
They might be hipster churches, but they are also just churches like any other - trying to preach God's word and spread His Gospel throughout their community.A month or so ago, I was discussing a particular hipster vs. traditional issue with my father-in-law (whose confident, t-shirt-tucked-into-jean-shorts attitude makes him the most above "hip" youth pastor I know), and, even though he agreed with me that an over-emphasis on cultural relevance is a weakness, he was quick to remind me of Paul's words in Romans 14:1:
- McCracken (117-118)
Accept the one whose faith is weak, without quarreling over disputable matters.
I think a lot of churches today are missing the point, but I've come to realize that ultimately, a little bit of bad ecclesiology can do no more permanent harm to the church than can dwindling numbers, negative perceptions, or anything else.
(More on God's persistent preservation of the church later)
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