Keeping Up With "Cool Christianity"

On August 13th, the Wall Street Journal published, "The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity", a little opinion piece by Brett McCracken. McCracken released his book, Hipster Christianity (Baker Books) on August 1st and some of his writing has been sent my way by friends and congregation members.

If you haven't read his editorial in the WSJ, I would certainly suggest taking the time to do so (it's not long at all).

This piece in particular has been linked to me by six different individuals and some have asked what I thought about it all. So, I figured because of the interest generated, it would serve well to just respond to it here.

The author's overall argument is that because 18-25 year-olds are leaving the Western Evangelical church, the response of said church has been to make "a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant." This image overhaul, he argues, is bad news because it hinders the church from being what twentysomethings really deisre: something real.
I can't disagree with that. In general, I like what McCracken is trying to do, but I think that this issue of the church trying to be cool or hip is completely separate from the church fighting to be relevant. Hip and relevant are different to me and I think the separation is clear in McCracken's examples and his charge at the end of his editorial.

In the article, McCracken supports his thesis somewhat awkwardly. Some examples prove well, but they're obvious and peripheral. Like his mention of churches with "iCampuses" that meet online or the one mega-church in Florida who put their pastor's life online with webcams for five weeks in a reality-series-like webcast.
Other than these examples, McCracken surprisingly assails the church's new found love of discussing sex and sexuality. He uses Rob Bell's book "Sex God" and sexual accountability websites like yourgreatsexlife.com and ivescrewedup.com as examples of this image makeover that is hurting the "realness" of the church.

Beyond that, he makes an example of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church's Q&A text messaging on subjects like "Biblical Oral Sex" and "Pleasuring Your Spouse," calling them and others "gimmicks." He goes on saying, "maybe sex sermons and indie-rock worship music do help in getting people in the door, and maybe even in winning new concerts. But what sort of Christianity are they really being converted to?"

He lets David Wells prove his point for him by quoting The Courage to Be Protestant and argues that most of these young Christians are just being won over to a sub-cultured church and not to God himself.

He uses himself as proof that "Cool Christianity" is not sustainable saying, "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."

OK.

Like I said, I love the heart behind it, but it's a lousy argument and I'm not sure his evidence lines up with his thesis. Beyond this, McCracken has a difficult time separating himself from Western binaries.

Look, no one wants a phony church and no one wants "cool" to outweigh "real." But the reality is, that for perhaps the first time, the evangelical church is actually leading the way in some cultural issues and more so, for the first time it seems to me that the church is not ignoring crucial issues in our culture. And who says that we have to either be "cool" or "real?"

The church exists in a culture and we tend to think in these binaries: that we either must be totally into the culture and cool or totally out of it and just do some ominous spirity-thing like a good monk. But being in culture and addressing the cultural issues of the present is one of the most important things the church can do. We move with culture and try and shape certain aspects of culture while staying biblically sound and Spirit led (obviously easier to say than do, but hang with me). Separating ourselves from the culture in order to hold fast to "reality" is actually not reality.

Talking about or writing books on sex is not a gimmick, either. It's actually what McCracken desires: it's real. Certainly it is cool as well to many young people, but it is the best example for showing that you can sometimes have both. Boldly taking on topics like pleasure and oral sex from a biblical perspective is absolutely what the church that once shied away from such things needs.
And why is the web another way the church is trying to be hip? If you're not online today, you don't exist. The church (and what comes with it) must exist in cyberspace to some capacity. I think a lot of those websites and most churches who are involved in technology are just more concerned about being available to people, not trying to be hip. The internet is not innately hip, it's just a part of our world.

The web is the way we now commune and communicate and for the church to be uninvolved in that would be to ignore the world itself. I'm a very harsh critic of online campuses and communities, but that is different than the accountability software that is out there. Accountability software has done nothing but help the two mega-churches I've been a part of and I don't see how it supports that thesis of a phony church. Isn't confessing your sins about as real as you can get? In my experience, those websites are not replacing confession as much as they are a step in the process of real repentance.

There is no sweeping generalization that all of those churches and books are winning young people to another hip thing. My closest friends are members at Mars Hill in Seattle and they're some of the most genuine Christ-followers I know. I've had numerous students read "Sex God" by Bell and be completely shocked and changed by Jesus through its pages.

Are there people who go to these churches and read these books who are still really not converted to Christ? Absolutely. And there are many in my church too.

Young people might want real more than cool, but why is it one or the other? Criticizing the church for colliding with cool is criticizing the church for colliding with the world and culture.

After writing, thinking, and talking a bit about all of this, it only reminds me of our collective need for Jesus. The churches who obsess over being hip need Jesus as much as those who are being as real as possible (whatever that means). Because for as easy as being hip can become an idol, so can our desire to be authentic. In the end, you can be "real" and "cool" or really cool and not be Jesus to people. I want to be less concerned with authenticity and hipness and more concerned with the exploration of who Jesus is and what he has done. If I'm cool or hip, I want it to be just a byproduct of me being Jesus to them.

In the end, we're in need of saving power from it all.