Monday, December 23, 2013

When Church & Cool Collide: Hipster Christianity


Protestant American Christianity is changing. Pews are disappearing and many Christians are abandoning the church altogether. But others, like the hipsters in the story below, challenge the traditional fundamentalism and seek to replace it with a more meaningful and relevant kind of Christianity.

Hipster Christianity, according to self proclaimed hipster, Brett McCracken, is all about when church and cool collide. In fact,  the title of McCracken's book  is "Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide." 

According to this story in NPR, hipsters are Christians "with esoteric interests going against the grain."  They seek a  "conscious separation from the connotations of traditional fundamentalism and evangelical Christianity."

The Wall Street Journal says that they "want to re-brand Christianity as hip."  They are on the technological cutting edge and their sermons try to be, what the Journal calls, "culturally savvy."

The center of Hipster Christianity is Hillsong Church NYC.  The NPR story says that the crowd is "racially diverse, tattooed, pierced and looking as if they belonged in an art gallery or punk-rock band."  A Hillsong pastor says that it is hard to define a hipster, but notes that "if by hipster you mean young, funky, artist-y people, then, sure, that's there. ... Our church is an example of a new way of articulating something in a way that people can understand."

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