A few weeks ago, I jumped on the “Pummel Brett McCracken for a crappy article in the WSJ” bandwagon (Part 1, Part 2). I’ve now had an opportunity to read his longer, and somewhat more responsible, article from this month’s Christianity Today. Both of these articles are summaries of his book, Hipster Christianity (full disclosure: I have not read the book).
As I said, I found the CT article to be more responsible than the WSJ article. What I mean by this
is that it more accurately represents “hipster” as a particular sub-culture. Whereas the WSJ article showed no clear understanding that being a “hipster” is different from tying to be “hip” or “cool,” the CT article gives some indication that McCracken does in fact know what the word hipster means. If you don’t know, here’s the photo essay I compiled to help you along (and the comments there are helpful too).
Having said that, however, I am still not convinced that McCracken has either a viable working definition of “hipster Christianity”, or a realistic understanding of how tied we all are to the cultures in which we live.
On the problematic of what qualifies as “hipster Christianity,” any church that is not simply a reflection of 50′s or 60′s Americana seems to be damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t. On the one hand, you’re hipster if you strive to throw off the culture of church and embrace the cool culture of the ironic urbanites. On the other hand, you’re hipster if you sing old hymns with simple guitar accompaniment.
I’m not sure if McCracken or the CT editors created the inset “Stuff Christian Hipsters Like,” but the upshot of the list is this: You’re a hipster if you read certain new writers, if you read certain old ones; you’re a hipster if you think theology or philosophy or spiritual classics or Jewish philosphers or modern popular writers are worth reading.
Seriously. The “stuff hipsters like” list is populated by Plato, Augustine, Tim Keller, N T Wright, Karl Barth, Flannery O’Connor, Thomas Merton, Paul Tillich, Marilynne Robinson.
It seems that the only thing that holds together McCracken’s hipster Christians is that he so labels them.
And this brings us up against the continuing problem that besets his work: he shows no indication that he is aware of the culturally embedded nature of all Christian practice. It’s one thing to imply that current Christians are being trendy because they like singer-songwriter type music.
18th Century Hipster
I’m eager to read the chapter that chastises Handel for mindlessly mimicking the style of early 18th centuryGerman and Italian opera, Luther for mimicking early 16th century nationalism, and Calvin for over-applying 16th century jurisprudence. Egad!
After that, I’ll flip back in search of an appendix that chastises Jesus for using terms that so clearly derived from militaristic Jewish expectations of God’s coming, conquering kingdom, and that chastises Paul for setting up churches that looked so much like ancient cults and guilds and other associations.
The muddiness of the article comes in this: there is no distinction made between those who might learn from the traditions of the past while engaging the present (people who would read Augustine, Barth, and Wright) from whatever this nebulous, nefarious “hipster” thing might be.
McCracken does say “hipster” is ok so long as it’s growing up in a “hipster” context. But then, apparently, if the “hipster” church has learned that the church should be talking about sex trafficking as injustice, homosexuality as a pressing moral issue, or AIDS as something demanding our attention, the rest of the Christian world isn’t allowed to follow suit. These are “shock value” topics, apparently, not the things that staid, upstanding suburbanites talk about in church.
What’s McCracken’s alternative? Returning to the stereotyped moralism of yesteryear. He mourns for the days when not drinking, not smoking, and not cussing were the defining marks of the church.
As we return to this “attractional”, fortress-mentality model (“missional”, after all, is a hipster Christian buzzword), McCracken hopes we will be freed from the theological ideas about new creation, justice, and holistic transformation that define the Christian hipster world.
21st Century Hipster (Is that a PBR?!)
A final word of warning that McCracken speaks is worth attending to. He warns that Hipster Christianity is the theology of the white, urban elite. I found this critique “interesting” inasmuch as it was juxtaposed with the photograph of Shane Claibourne’s bible study in North Philly. This group illustrates the vacuousness of “hipster Christianity” for lower-class Latinos and Blacks by only having a half dozen African Americans in among the dozen persons pictured. Can there be anything in such a movement for the non-white urbanite?! Hmm….
In all, I find the thinking muddy. McCracken has some good points to raise, but does not have the mental clarity at this point to present them in such a way that they helpfully critique one set of practices. The only common thread that runs through the article is that “Hipster Christianity” is not identical to what came before us in the good ol’ 50s and 60s (before the cultural revolution of the latter decade). But to recognize difference from what came before, or cultural influence on current practice, is not the same as demonstrating why there is something amiss. The article depends too much on innuendo and suggestion of vacuousness by its categorization of things as “new”, “cool”, “shocking”, and “urban”.
Is the answer to the present trend really to critique everything that has happened not only in culture but also biblical studies, theology, and awareness of the larger world in which we live? I don’t think so. Leaving the article, I’m still not convinced there’s any such thing as “Hipster Christianity.” But if there is–may it thrive.
I wish McCracken would read “Deep Church” by Jim Belcher. I think Jim does a great job breaking down the facets of the emergent church and what that means. McCracken has taken the worst parts of it, framed it on the whole of it, and hopes everyone jumps on his bandwagon.
McCracken’s book is sadly representative of too much of the “young, restless, and Reformed” movement’s writing: invent an axe so that you can grind it.
And YRR is its own “hip” movement…
That may be one of your most interesting observations in this whole discussion.
I was bound to hit on one eventually!
You guys are silly.
Brilliant response to McCracken, Daniel. Wonder where he goes to church? Wonder if he reads Wright? Wonder why he bothered to confuse people with all this lumping and dumping?
Kirk, good thoughts. Personal opinion is that the Church spends entirely too much time trying to define our culture and not enough time engaged with the culture.
I am interested to read the book in its entirety. These interviews and the first free chapter online are at the very least intriguing.
shameless plug.
check out our “hipster Christianity” view of the establishment.
http://vimeo.com/8537137
Sorry for a bit of extra randomness, Daniel, but I can’t resist, as a shout-out from Philly: “Shane Claibourne’s bible study in NE Philly”? You probably meant North Philly? Quite a vast huge difference… NE Philly is the large tract of almost all-whites, in the true northeast corner, that frequently grumbles about how it should secede from the city (in which white voters are actually now a minority). North Philly is crumbling (well, I guess it’s just about done crumbling now, and some spots have been refurbished) post-industrial, and almost all black and hispanic. Except for the part in the immediate environs of Temple U.
If I found out that Claiborne actually had a bible study in NE Philly, I would be quite intrigued indeed.
Ok, you can go back to the main topic now. :- )
Yikes. ’tis fixed!
The thing that truly confuses me in all of this is that after only a brief look at McCracken’s blog (http://stillsearching.wordpress.com/), it is obvious that based on his tastes in media… he is squarely in the middle of his own stereotype. Quotes from Buber, Walker Percy, McLuhan, Sufjan Stephens, George Steiner, Tillich, Wright, etc etc adorn the site. So if he is critiquing “Christian Hipster”-dom, is he counting himself as a part of, or a part from, the “problem”? And if it is the latter, why is he excusing himself from the critique? What makes him different? Muddy thinking indeed.
I think I’ve found McCracken’s uncited, primary source: Hipster Dinosaurs.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ihatedinosaurs/hipster-dinosaurs-ppz?ref=nf
Genius, Robby. Genius.