Christianity Today blew up their magazine and website about the topic of Christian hipsters this past month. I just got my hands on it a few days ago (yeah, I subscribe).
First, the cynical…
-This strikes me as Christianity Today’s one time per year opportunity to appear …cough…cough…Relevant. It is very similar on what they have done in the past about emergent churches and that “young and reformed” article from last year. It shows they are being “down” with the “young folks.”
-Speaking of coughing or Relevant, the choice of author for this piece was very curious. Brett McCracken no doubt knows what he’s talking about (he wrote a book!), but the article fails to mention (though Brett kind-of/sort-of mentions it) that he writes tons of pieces for Relevant magazine all the time. So he coyly notes that Christian hipsters are of course “reading Relevant magazine”…(nice plug!). Though McCracken says he visited many “hipster churches” for research (how did he find them? How did they let them in?), McCracken fails to note whether he is or is not a hipster…therefore defying and defining what he’s trying to define. Or as Ted Olsen noted in the opening paragraph of the editor’s note, part of a hipster is “‘adamantly denying your existence while wearing clearly defined symbols that proclaim it’” (Olsen is quoting Douglas Haddow). I’m not saying McCracken is or is not a hipster, it’s just that I’m not sure how much journalistic objectivity he has on the matter.
-This fact is frustrating because it could be argued that Relevant magazine in many ways has made it okay for Christian hipsters to exist or more fairly, to be recognized. In fact they have built themselves up as a media company doing this—by profiling both Christians and non-Christian artists, celebrities, etc., they keep trying to figure out how far their readers will go, how far they will follow them into this cool Christian world. (*Full disclosure: many years ago, I wrote about 5 book reviews for Relevant Magazine, that’s all).
-It could be said that people like me for example would be interested in art or media or movies outside of Christian circles (of course I would, in fact that’s basically all I consume). Does that mean I need a pseudo-Christian magazine for it?
-To bring this back around, it’s true that Relevant could have recognized the zeitgeist of the times, that the culture was changing just as they were coming upon the idea.
-But in many ways, the Christianity Today article that McCracken penned seemed that the pot was not only calling, but also decorating the kettle black. It’s hard to say that Erwin McManus or Mark Driscoll’s church are “hipster,” in fact they’re huge. (Are there a lot of hipsters that live in those respective cities —L.A & Seattle—perhaps, but then how hipster are they? Maybe they are just evangelical megachurches. Maybe they are just churches reaching people. You know, like how Spanish-speaking churches are more apt to reach those who speak Spanish).
-Also, though McCracken offers a quick rundown of past “christian cool” he lumps in people like Shane Claiborne who 10 years ago would have been called a hippie or Jesus People type guy, now is suddenly a hipster with his dreads and dirty unfashionable clothes. That’s not a hipster, that’s just a guy who loves Jesus and is doing things differently. Different does not necessarily equal hipster. If so, Tony Campolo has been a hipster for quite awhile and so has Wendell Berry and a bunch of others.
-Speaking of Wendell Berry, the attached Christian hipster reading list is kind of funny—-something that actually discusses hipsters like Kerouac or Mailer probably should have been included—reading Terry Eagleton, Flannery O’Connor, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, Steinbeck and Faulkner does not make someone a hipster, but makes them part of a high school English class.
-I guess this magazine piece is supposed to have shock value for a number of reasons—1) the presupposition that hipsters aren’t supposed to go to church 2) churches may actually be reaching younger people 3) if hipsters are supposed to be ironic, what does that mean for Christianity?
-Honestly, I don’t see how this any different than another article in the same issue about sex offenders in the church. Why didn’t they blow that up? That seems just as controversial and possibly more RELEVANT to show that people are coming to Christ. But hipsters are broken too, I guess. And it’s more trendy to feature hipsters or something.
-Historical acknowledgement of hipsters was nowhere found in McCracken’s article, but again appeared in Olsen’s introductory remarks. There’s an ironic detachment, but Olsen says maybe Christian hipsters will never fully understand this detachment—because they actually do (or should want to) identify with their neighbors, with those who are not like them, and not just take their fashions or mock their existence.
The piece does celebrate some of the good in Christian hipster circles. They live in cities, next to poor people. They volunteer with people that aren’t necessarily like them. They care about social justice issues. They have a soft spot for some of historical Christianity’s practices. They don’t all drive big cars. Instead of being so ironic about it, maybe they are espousing some overlooked values that are part of the Christian faith. They are using resources in different and possibly wiser ways.
You will know them by their love, right?
Here are some more articles on the Christianity Today website about this topic.
