Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide
Authentic Christian Cool THE FUSION OF FAITH AND THE AMERICAN OBSESSION WITH "COOL" Churches throughout the world spend a ton of money, time and resources every Sunday on making the church “attractive” to seekers and consumers and otherwise unchurched “prospects.” Whether this means having Starbucks coffee or a dynamic rock band or hundreds of candles and IKEA decorations, the rationale is the same: The church must look good on the surface so people will come and enjoy it and not be alienated. But we forget that the church is not a building, and it is not in the stuff. No, the church is us. The buildings and design are important, but the church is ultimately people. It is lives transformed. Whatever designs on being attractive we might have as a church, they must first and foremost start with our own lives.
When It’s Centered on Christ, Not on Consumption and Image
If we are making the case that cool Christianity can be a good thing, we have to be clear that the “cool” part of Christianity must exude out of the “Christ” aspect of it, not from the stylish packaging or trendiness it might otherwise be associated with. In other words, an authentic Christian hipster community looks attractive and hip and cool not because it tries to fashion itself in the world’s image, but because it does exactly the opposite—it fashions itself after Christ’s strange kingdom and His transforming Gospel for a world that desperately needs it.
People should look at this type of Christian hipster and see Christ, not cool. And this goes for any type of Christian, regardless of the question of hip. People should look at us and want what we have. Beyond style, beyond fashion, we’ve got to be appealing and sought after for what we have that the world doesn’t: Christ’s love and kingdom values. We should be a taste of the kingdom for the world, a fragrance of goodness and peace and love and mercy that makes us far more fulfilling than the fickle fashions of the day. The Gospel has to be apparent in the way we live our lives—the way we minister to the poor, the way we treat each other, the way we treat our families and friends and strangers, the way we have victory over sin and death—and this will be immediately cool to onlookers if we live it out in a full-bodied manner.
If Christian cool exists, it exists as a sort of happy accident—not as an intended consequence of careful planning and high-level marketing meetings, but as an unintended byproduct of a faithfulness to the Gospel and an authentic community’s outworking of that in everyday life. It’s not about managing one’s image or carefully selecting a color scheme based on months of market research, but about living lives that are loving, giving, sacrificial, righteous and resurrection-minded. It’s about not being conformed to the world, but being transformed, Romans 12 style, by the renewal of our minds.
Christian cool is also about what we can offer the world. Hip, as we saw earlier, tends to be self-focused and all about me, but Christian hip must be outward-focused—about giving rather than taking, producing rather than consuming. Hipsterdom today is largely defined in terms of consumption—in terms of the bands and brands that signify acceptance in the elite circles of fashion and good taste. On their Facebook profile pages and blogs and biographies, hipsters today tend to define themselves in terms of the media they consume rather than the causes they champion. If they position themselves in terms of politics or ideology, they usually do so in a negative sense (being opposed to this or in rebellion against that).
The motivating forces of Christian hip, on the other hand, are positive. They are for the world, offering God’s answers and hope to anyone—of any race or disposition or proclivity or vice—who opens himself or herself up enough to receive the gift of grace. Christianity cares not about self-congratulation as much as loving the prostitutes, widows and vagrants of the world. It is not concerned with maintaining a stylish demeanor as much as coming to the rescue of white-collar criminals, stressed-out soccer moms, and anyone in the world who feels overcome by a gaping lack. And when you think about it like that, Christianity seems infinitely more hip than even hip itself.
And so given that hipsterdom at large is now devoid of significant countercultural meaning beyond the superficial level, and that hipsters are typically aimless, irresponsible and apathetic about all but the vainest and most immediate pursuits, perhaps the positive, proactive Christian version might actually serve to rehabilitate the notion of cool—to recover its forgotten activist roots and move cool in a direction away from shallow elitism and vanity, to a place of passionate engagement and kingdom activism. It would require a shift in how we think about and use the word cool, however. We would have to abandon the notion of “cool” as meaning “elite, trendy, fashionable” and start thinking of it more in the “admirable, inspiring, moving” sense, like when you tell a friend who works with the homeless that what they’re doing is “way cool.” Or something like that.
A graduate of Wheaton College with a master’s degree in cinema and media studies from the University of California, Los Angeles, Brett McCracken blogs about movies, media and popular culture at The Search. He also is a regular contributing writer for Christianity Today and Relevant magazines and serves as managing editor for Biola magazine, a quarterly publication for Biola University alumni and friends. In Hipster Christianity, McCracken explores the challenges associated with the fusion of Christian faith and the American obsession with "cool."
This excerpt is from Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide by Brett McCracken. Copyright © 2010 by Brett McCracken. Used by permission. All rights to this material are reserved. Material is not to be reproduced, scanned, copied or distributed in any printed or electronic form without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. BakerPublishingGroup.com.
To read Chapter 1, click here.
To order from Amazon.com: Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide
Each issue of Outreach is designed to bring you the ideas, innovations and resources that will help you reach your community and change the world.
