Saturday, August 21, 2010

What Evangelicals could have learned from "Spirit of Vatican II" hipsters

Brett McCracken, "The Perils of 'Wannabe Cool' Christianity" (Wall Street Journal, August 13, 2010):
"How can we stop the oil gusher?" may have been the question of the summer for most Americans. Yet for many evangelical pastors and leaders, the leaking well is nothing compared to the threat posed by an ongoing gusher of a different sort: Young people pouring out of their churches, never to return.

... In a 2007 study, Lifeway Research determined that 70% of young Protestant adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Statistics like these have created something of a mania in recent years, as baby-boomer evangelical leaders frantically assess what they have done wrong (why didn't megachurches work to attract youth in the long term?) and scramble to figure out a plan to keep young members engaged in the life of the church.

Increasingly, the "plan" has taken the form of a total image overhaul, where efforts are made to rebrand Christianity as hip, countercultural, relevant. As a result, in the early 2000s, we got something called "the emerging church"—a sort of postmodern stab at an evangelical reform movement. Perhaps because it was too "let's rethink everything" radical, it fizzled quickly. But the impulse behind it—to rehabilitate Christianity's image and make it "cool"—remains.

... one of the most popular—and arguably most unseemly—methods of making Christianity hip is to make it shocking. Sex is a popular shock tactic. Evangelical-authored books like "Sex God" (by Rob Bell) and "Real Sex" (by Lauren Winner) are par for the course these days. At the same time, many churches are finding creative ways to use sex-themed marketing gimmicks to lure people into church.

... Then there is Mark Driscoll at Seattle's Mars Hill Church—who posts Q&A videos online, from services where he answers questions from people in church, on topics such as "Biblical Oral Sex" and "Pleasuring Your Spouse."

... If the evangelical Christian leadership thinks that "cool Christianity" is a sustainable path forward, they are severely mistaken. 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.

If we are interested in Christianity in any sort of serious way, it is not because it's easy or trendy or popular. It's because Jesus himself is appealing, and what he says rings true. It's because the world we inhabit is utterly phony, ephemeral, narcissistic, image-obsessed and sex-drenched—and we want an alternative. It's not because we want more of the same.
So stop paddling about in the shallow puddle of "Wannabe Cool Evangelicalism," and, as Cardinal Newman might have declared: Go deep into history, cease to be Protestant, and come home to Rome and the bottomless ocean of spiritual resources in Catholic Tradition!

[Hat tip to RealCatholicTV.com]

Update (8/30/2010): JM writes: "To see where the erudite yet 'poppish' mindset leads in religion, go visit patrol magazine's website. Begun at King's College as an evangelical outpost, they now detest the label evangelical. They are far too sophisticated for all of that. They are the change they've been waiting for, in all seriousness."

8 comments:

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

Since V2 has made it clear that we are all, Catholics and protestants, "People of God" in Christ, living in the grrrrrreatest Christian nation on earth -- a nation from which, frankly, the magisterium could learn much -- it is not unreasonable to expect that the obsessions of this wondrous nation would be reflected by the "People of God" in Christ no less than by the godless schlubs that this nation so kindly tolerates.

Protestantism having always been the headless, retarded, obsessive-compulsive, sclerotic wing of the "People of God", it is not surprising that its disorganized and self-contradictory takes on sex would be depraved and downright wacky -- as they are authored by self-conscious hucksters whose approach to ministry is akin to carny-barking. Catholics approach these topics somewhat more circumspectly, but their dialogues with the culture of John Courtney Murray's earthly paradise has yielded similarly depraved, poppish renderings of the subject by Christopher West and numerous other theological poppets having mastered the basically protestant sales pitch, with EWTN providing an American Bandstand style platform for their infomercials.

People have largely begun to realize that you don't need Jesus, if Jesus is nothing more than a logo for corperatism, hucksterism, and the boundlessly "tolerant" hedonistic lifestyle that is the basis for economic well being. As the distinction between American bishops and any other upper management echelon becomes more difficult to distinguish, Catholicism and protestantism will degenerate to a "Certs is a candy mint vs Certs is a breath mint" proposition. That has largely happened already in a good many diocese on the fruited plain.

Anonymous said...

Isnt' "making Christianity relevant" like making History interesting, or like making the music of AmChurch banal?

Anonymous said...

Ralph --

It's good to know that you still hold your fire sometimes.

Chris

Where's Fr. O'Leary when we need him?

Anonymous said...

Ralph,
I'm trying to interpret what you have written. I understand much of it but some of what you write seems to be contrdicted in another paragraph. Also what does “poppish” mean? Did you mean to write popish? If so in my neck of the woods that is a derogative term for all things Catholic. I thought that you are Catholic.

As a side note, I don't consider Christopher West to be Catholic in the real sense at all.

Donna

c matt said...

adults between 18-22 stop attending church regularly.

Using the term adults loosely, funny how that seems to coincide with the college years. Any stats on how many return to some church or other around 30-something (i.e, when they get married, have kids, and essentially grow up?)?

Ralph Roister-Doister said...

Donna, why would you base your entire interpretation of my remarks on the assumption of a misspelling? If I had meant to write "popish", that's what I would have written. But I wrote "poppish", ie, in the manner of pop, in a pop style, of or belonging to pop, tending toward pop, verging on pop, such as a comic book new testament, or an "Adventures of Cardinal Lercaro" cartoon, or Screamin' Jay Hawkins sings his favorite Novus Ordo "poppish" folk songs, or Rodney Dangerfield recites his favorite passages from Thomas Aquinas, or V2 action figures, or . . . .

Dark Horse said...

Screamin' Jay Hawkins??? Wasn't he the one who sang "Constipation Blues," or was it "Gather Us In"?

JM said...

To see where the erudite yet "poppish" mindset leads in religion, go visit patrol magazine's website. Begun at King's College as an evangelical outpost, they now detest the label evangelical. They are far too sophisticated for all of that. They are the change they've been waiting for, in all seriousness.