Hipster Christian

Recently, Eileen Flynn, religion columnist for the Austin American Statesman, wrote to me to get feedback about Brett McCracken's recent book, Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide. She couldn't have used my entire response, but encouraged me to write it down somewhere. Here is that response:

By strange coincidence, I just picked up Hipster Christianity this week, though I haven't had the chance to dip into it much. However, I share McCracken's concerns, to be sure. If there's one way we've put our own spin on the boomer Christian legacy of marrying Christianity to power, it is in our marrying Christianity to "cool". While sincere Christians from my parents' generation (this does not, by the way, include my specific parents and they are not the only exceptions) can object to the loss of public prayer in schools or the legalization of gay marriage; I sense that what is often behind these objections is a desire not to be left out of the mainstream. If gay marriage is legalized, the church that objects to it is suddenly on the outskirts again. If public prayer isn't standard practice in public schools, then we start to feel like we're on the fringe. Folks from my generation scoff at their parents' stance on some of these issues and yet long to sit at "the cool kids table" as much as their parents long to sit in positions of power. We speak as if we're pursuing an edgier, weirder kind of Christianity, but it is too often a new spin on a worn out record. That isn't to say that much of what is transpiring in younger churches isn't a good thing. The call to marry the gospel to social justice is right and good. We've been too long concerned with what will happen if we die tonight, but not what happens if we live tomorrow. We're seeing a renewed vigor to effect the here and now as well as the hereafter, and I praise God for it. But we are also a generation that embraces what is ironic and "hip" to our detriment. We squirm in the face of earnestness and sincerity, when these are both qualities that faith requires. We celebrate Leslie as an iconic Austinite, but still ignore the awkward kid with the out of date clothes. 

Part of the problem is that we saw some sacred cows that needed skewering and enjoyed it so much, we skewered anything sacred. Now we take pride in the idea that nothing offends us, that we don't have the religious hang ups our parents did and, most importantly, that we aren't any different from "you". And that's the truly frightening thing behind the power play and the commitment to cool; we want to make a difference, but not at the risk of being different. We don't want to be "set apart", we don't want to be God's "peculiar people". 

My sister Bri used to joke that Austin's motto should be "Keep Austin Manageably Quirky", because we aren't ready for the truly weird. A new generation of Christians struggle with that same problem. "Manageably quirky" can be cool, but "weird", almost by definition, is not. The weirdness of Christian faith uses words like purity alongside words like passion, it speaks of fidelity alongside faith. It does not self-promote or worry about who's watching. It loves it's neighbor, even if it's neighbor is strange or smelly or simply "uncool". Especially then. It promotes hospitality as well a charity and practices spiritual discipline alongside social justice. It submits itself, humbles itself, and loses itself. It celebrates the meek as well as the merciful, the poor in spirit as well as the peacemaker. The years we spent pursuing power left us unable to embrace that sort of faith. We should be careful not to repeat past mistakes on a quest for what's cool.

I'm reminded of something one of my favorite authors, David Foster Wallace, wrote before he died: 

The next..."rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law.

And now one final thought. The apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians: "...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things." But we don't use words like "true" and "noble" and "right" and "lovely" anymore. They're too candid, too devout, too heartfelt, too plain. They aren't cool. We need to rediscover these words and the character that comes with them. We need to remember a savior about whom scripture says, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." We need to model ourselves on a man who was most certainly relevant, but almost certainly not cool.