Hipster Christianity

There's a pretty interesting article at the Wall Street Journal's website called "The Perils of Hipster Christianity" by Brett McCracken (and I guess the articles ties into his new book). The piece is about how when kids leave for college, they're also leaving church, and how the church has tried to combat that by being "cool". McCracken actually has a lot of good points and I agree with a lot of what he says to a degree. I do love his ending statement.

"As a twentysomething, I can say with confidence that when it comes to church, we don't want cool as much as we want real.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it's easy or trendy or popular. It's because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It's because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same."

And this article has me interested in reading his book. Because although there are good points, I think a lot of his statements are misguided. While I agree that quoting Stephen Colbert or Lady Gaga during a sermon is lame, and yes, a church sponsored screening of No Country for Old Men doesn't seem right, is there a need to attack fashion? If the pastor is wearing skinny jeans or has a certain haircut, is that really a gimmick or is he just keeping up with the times? People change their fashion styles all the time and it's not like I think we're seeing a lot of pastors over 35 rocking skinny jeans in church.

I don't know if attacking churches for using technology is fair. A younger breed of pastors and churches are most certainly going to use technology to help them do church. The younger generation has been raised on technology and I don't know if using it in creative new ways during church is a bad thing.

I can't really address his comments about just being shocking for the sake of pushing the envelope because I don't really know anything about the churches he's talking about. I will say Rob Bell's Sex God was much less about sex then I thought it would be. And honestly, the title did it's job. It got me to pick up the book and buy it. It's good marketing. The book was good and not as sex focused as I thought it would be. I don't know if McCracken read the book or not. If he hasn't, it's not fair for him to use that as an example. And I also don't think there's anything wrong with honest talk about sex in the church. It's needed.

I'm interested in reading the book and hoping to really get a better explanation into McCracken's thoughts. The article isn't really expansive on anything he brings up and I guess that's not really the point. But it did get me interested in the book.

You can read the article here. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111704575355311122648100.html?mod=googlenews_wsj