"christian hipsters"

Yet another reason to love the blogosphere: It makes it easier to discover convenient labels for yourself!

I found "Christian hipster" through my friend Danielle, who directed me to this blog with the words, "I feel seen through." The original entry is from a blog called "The Search," named for a passage from Walker Percy's The Moviegoer:

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life…. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Considering I spent a good part of last weekend checking out lit crit on Walker Percy from the library, this guy's got me pretty well pegged.

According to The Search's Brett McCracken, among the things Christian hipsters like are:
-music, movies, and books -- Christian or not
-Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, N.T. Wright (totes heard him speak at Emory last year!!!1), C.S. Lewis, Soren Kierkegaard, Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris
-breaking taboos
-getting tattoos
-carrying flasks
-smoking clove cigarettes
-bands

Among things they don't like are:
-megachurches
-alter calls
-Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Mel Gibson & The Passion
-contemporary Christian music
-"beach evangelism" (I have no idea either)
-pastors who talk too much about politics or youth pastors who talk too much about Braveheart (Yes! What is it with youth pastors and Mel Gibson/torture porn? (yeah I said it))

However, having spent the past several years in "Reformed" Presbyterian churches (I don't think I've heard a single sermon in my adult life that didn't quote Tolkien or Lewis), this discovery isn't as eerie or exciting as it would have been when I was 18 and attending an evangelical Episcopal school during the week and my parents' Baptist church on Sundays.

Brett also missed the one huge, glaring mark of the Christian hipster: Sufjan Stevens.

Additionally, they/we like to sing new takes on old hymns, usually in a folksy style (at least here in the South) with instruments like the guitar, mandolin, and bongos, always with a grassroots community approach, using the talents of people within the congregation rather than setting up a CD player with "Songs of Worship" or hiring an organ player like ye churches of olde.

We are socially conscious, attend urban churches with a mission to love the city and help the poor, care for the environment, and enjoy a diversity of friendships.

But the main thing that McCracken misses in his analysis is that, beyond being mere cultural preferences or, worse, snob factors that allow us to feel superior to the "evangelical types," these likes and dislikes are actually founded in scripture (what we hipster Christ-followers call the Bible), and are the result of living the Christian life with integrity!

Over and over again in the gospels, Jesus rebuked people (Pharisees) who thought that God favored them (Matthew 15) and overturned religious taboos (like healing on the sabbath (Mark 3), eating with unclean hands (Matthew 15:1), and uncircumcision -- actually that one was mostly his follower Paul: Galatians 5:6).

Despite what Dobson's Focus on the Family might have me believe, I, along with the apostle Paul (who wrote, like, almost all of the New Testament) "know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself" (Romans 14:14). The artistic creations of man echo the glorious act of creation performed by God in Genesis 1. And God didn't make crap.

Jesus hung out with sinners (the disciple Matthew was a tax collector). He healed the sick and gave food to the poor. He reached out to outsiders, including Samaritans, whom the religious people "did not associate with" (John 4). He demonstrated and preached a radical respect for people groups who were oppressed and devalued at the time, including foreigners and women.

Finally, nowhere in the Bible does it say that the purpose for Christians on Earth is to avoid bad stuff (and certainly music with swear words, dancing and tobacco products aren't the baddest) so they can get into heaven when they die. Rather, Jesus said that his purpose on earth was to tell about the "kingdom of God" (Luke 4:43) he promised to establish on this earth at the end of time, and told his followers to pray, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Luke 11:2). This "new earth" is described further in Revelation 21 as when God will descend down to earth on a throne to live with his people, take away all sadness and pain, and "make everything new."

God didn't create the earth so that he could trash it in the end. All of Jesus's good works and healing in the gospels foreshadowed the ultimate healing that he said would come at the end of time. He instructed his followers to continue his works and healing on this earth in preparation for its restoration.

So the concept of Christians who reject the xenophobia, sexism, and hypocrisy of the Christian Right is nothing new. Jesus started all that... sooooo two thousand years ago.

[And here's where'd I place my MS Paint rendering of the Jesus Hipster, if only I didn't think it might be a little bit blasphemous.]