A Thinking Reed

Xtreme Xianity!

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Lee M.

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Interesting NY Times article about young, mostly evangelical, Christians adopting the “Christian-as-rebel” model. Tough to separate the wheat from the chaff, though. On the one hand, you have what look for all the world like transparent marketing ploys trying to reach the Hot Topic crowd, such as

full-contact skateboard Bible study groups; […] Christian punk, Goth and hip-hop CD’s; […] evangelical tattoo parlors; […] sportswear brands like Extreme Christian Clothing and Fear God; [..] alt churches or ministries called Revolution, Scum of the Earth and Punk Girl; […] a podcast called Xtreme Christianity, which turns out to be a fairly conventional weekly sermon delivered by a Baptist minister in a suburb of Kansas City, Mo.

But then you have what seem to be genuinely salutary movements like the quasi-monastic communities that have been formed in North Philly and elsewhere:

The claim of a Christian counterculture, which recurs periodically in American Protestantism, cuts in two directions, defining itself as counter to the consumer-driven secular culture and to mainstream church culture. For Shane Claiborne, 30, the author of “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical” (Zondervan), it has meant living for a decade in a monastic community in North Philadelphia, whose members make their own clothing, refrain from sex outside marriage and minister to the homeless and poor.

Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and other books, seems to have the most sensible take though:

“It’s a cart-before-the-horse thing,” said Mr. Miller, who frequently speaks to Christian youth groups and works with campus ministries. “If you’re a Christian, you need to obey God. And if you obey God, you’re going to be seen as a rebel, both within American church culture and popular culture. But that’s not the point. The point is to obey God.”

That seems right. There’s no particular virtue in being rebellious or countercultural as such. Plus, the fixation on being countercultural and rebellious, especially when it involves aping secular culture, often ends up pandering to “the youth,” surely one of the most pernicious tendencies in American culture. This just reinforces our sociey’s prevalent age segregation which the church of all places should resist. “The kids” are not a repository of all that is good and true, and young Christians have always needed “elders in the faith” to instruct them in the ways of the church.

Comments

3 responses to “Xtreme Xianity!”

  1. The Zero Boss

    “But that’s not the point. The point is to obey God.”

    Even as a Buddhist, I can agree with that. 😉 Coming to a faith because it’s the “rebellious” thing to do is a rather shallow form of belief.

    Reply
  2. Eric Lee

    Hey, yeah– great post! R

    eminds me a bit of how in D. Stephen Long’s book on John Wesley, he reminds us that humility itself isn’t a virtue– there’s nothing virtuous itself in humility: it is just an emptiness, a receptivity for the actual virtues of faith, endurance, hope, peaceableness, and most of all, love. He ties that in with a Reinhold Niebuhrian concept of fallibilism which is all good and true, but that’s outside the scope of this post.

    I like Donald Miller 🙂 Oh, and something I learned that was really interesting is that he has no idea what the ’emergent’ thing is. If you check out Miller’s books on Amazon, you’ll see McLaren’s books as those being bought along with his, but a few Thursdays ago when asked about the ’emergent’ thing, he said, “You know, I really have no idea what that is.”

    Then, later on, he asked somebody to “prove beauty.” How ‘pomo’ of him. Sorta.

    Peace,

    Eric

    Reply
  3. Eric Lee

    (just to clarify my unnecessary tangent, the concept of fallibilism itself isn’t ‘good and true’, but Long’s connection of Niebuhr, false humility, and fallisbilism is a good one.) okbyenowthx.

    Reply

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