Brett McCracken is a graduate of Wheaton College and UCLA. His day job is managing editor for Biola University's Biola magazine. He regularly writes movie reviews and features for Christianity Today, Relevant magazine, and ConversantLife.com.
In Hipster Christianity (Baker Books), Brett examines an emerging category he calls "Christian hipsters"--an unlikely fusion of American obsession with being "cool" and the realities of a faith that is often seen as anything but. Brett was kind enough to answer 5 Questions about his book and what it's all about.
What does “Hipster Christianity” mean?
Hipster Christianity is, in short, the fusion of hipster culture—independent,
alternative, anti-mainstream, fashionable—with Christianity. It’s a world of
mostly twentysomething Christian evangelicals who grew up on CCM and hysteria
about being in the “end times,” but now care more about things like social
justice, creation care, and whiskey tasting. It’s a world where things like Left
Behind, Jesus fish bumper stickers, and
door-to-door evangelism are relevant only as a source of irony or nostalgia. It’s
a world where Braveheart youth
pastor analogies and Thomas Kinkade and anathema. Hipster Christianity is about
rebelling against the legalistic, overly political, apathetic-about culture
evangelicalism of the latter half of the 20th century. It’s a new iteration of
youth-oriented, alternative, countercultural Christianity—the offspring of the
Jesus movement of the 60s-70s but less Pentecostal and more liturgical (in a “postmodern
pastiche” sort of way).
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