Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide

I'm not a hipster. I don't normally hang out with hipsters. But I do happen to live in the San Francisco Bay Area and thus am, on occasion, introduced to one or interact with one in some way. But the stated purpose of Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide by Brett McCracken - "exploring, analyzing, and critiquing [the] desire for Christianity to be cool" and analyzing "already-existing cultures of Christian hip" - resonated with my interest in Church and culture. It did not disappoint.

Hipster Christianity is broken down into three parts. The first, "The History and Collision of Cool and Christianity" breaks down the "history of hip", from the Renaissance to Rousseau, Paris to London to America, Emerson to Whitman to Thoreau, the birth of mass media and mass culture to counterculture. It profiles the characteristics, motivations, and environments of hipsters and those that pursue coolness. It highlights the historical seeds of Christian cool with exposition on Young Life, FCA, InterVarsity, the Jesus People, Christian rock, and today's Relevant magazine. We then see profiles of the Christian hipster, like Rob Bell, Donald Miller, Lauren Winner, and Mark Driscoll. This first section offered a well-thought, well-presented look at the forces and fundamentals behind cool, hipsters, and cool Christianity.

The second part, "Hipster Christianity in Practice", went in-depth with profiles of churches most likely to be labeled "hip" and recent philosophies such as the "emergent church", social justice, and "missional" philosophies that have been backed, strengthened, or supported by those churches and the hipsters that inhabit them. It concludes with a discussion of art, including movies, music, books, and traditional artistic pursuits, and the differing viewpoints of the sacredness of creating and created culture.

The final section is where McCracken is free to take a stand, having been freed from background and profiles to really investigate the fundamental questions this book seeks to answer:

• Are the pursuits of Christianity and cool irreconcilable?
• Under what circumstances might hipster Christianity be a positive thing?
• How can Christianity stop its skid to the periphery of culture?
• What does it mean to be truly relevant in a culture driven by evanescent trends?
• If there are standards of naturally cool and marketably cool, is Christianity one, the other, both, or neither?

McCracken here brings the history, understanding, and theology together, arguing that while fundamental theological inconsistencies exist with the church trying to be cool, there are valuable things the Church can restore to proper place in our theology.

He argues that cool's fundamental pursuit of individualism clashes with the Biblical principles of community, sacrifice, and collective purpose, that the pride and vanity that come with coolness are not compatible with humility, and the hipsters' focus on the temporary and transitionary relevant are in contrast to the eternal Church, gospel, and kingdom of Christ.

McCracken acknowledges that some of the motivations that underly "cool" can work for the Church, however, when we form authentic relationships, value community, and live our values:

If cool Christianity exists, it will not be because that is how we have packaged it and sold it. It will rather be an organic phenomenon that happens because of the nature of the community that the gospel has entered and transformed. Or it will be an outgrowth of the nature of the gospel itself - which is certainly counter to the prevailing mainstream values of the world. ... If Christianity is perceived as cool, it is because Christianity is cool. The lifestyles of Christ followers do, at the end of the day, end up looking cool because that's that the gospel is. That's what kingdom living looks like.

He argues that Christians should sincerely celebrate art and culture and good things, that we can create "an authentic Christian hipster community [that] 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 transforming gospel for a world that desperately needs it." We are called to be a counterculture, one eternally relevant, lasting rather than ephemeral, selfless and confident about our virtues, and unquestionably centered on God.

And that's McCracken's closing message in this thesis. Christianity's pursuit of cool and the Christian hipster's pursuit of hip are dangerous if they come from a commitment to culture, not to Christ. We are called to find our appeal not from the culture surrounding us, but from within.