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Hipster Christianity is one of the best books I’ve read recently when it comes to Christ and culture. Brett McCraken, who blogs at stillsearching.wordpress.com, and is a frequent contributor to Christianity Today, takes a hard look at the “hipster christian” subculture, evaluating its strengths and more importantly its weaknesses. This is a valuable book for anyone trying to figure out how to reach out to the urban cool. McCraken’s conclusions, though accurate, will surprise many.

The book begins by looking at the history of hip or cool. McCraken places this in the Enlightenment, and gives and interesting and compelling argument for doing so. As the history moves forward one begins to see how cool today is connected to cool in the past and certain streams that seem to flow through hipness throughout the centuries. After looking at the history of cool McCracken then takes on contemporary hipster culture, describing the trends in fashion, music, pop culture, and art that define this generation of cool.

McCraken’s next task is to look at the history of Christian cool, and what the current scene of hipster Christianity looks like. He places the beginnings of Hipster Christianity in a fairly contemporary setting, the Jesus Freak movement among the hippies in the late sixties and early seventies. (Though his argument is good, one could place this earlier, in the Gospel recordings of artists like Johnny Cash and Elvis, or even to the international celebrity of certain preachers like Aimee Simple-McPherson or George Whitefield, who were some of the biggest celebrities of their times, effecting the cultural zeitgeist both in and outside the church.) Essentially this is the beginning of the CCM scene, which might be better categorized as the beginning of the consumer Christian sub-culture, which McCracken critiques, than that of the hipster Christian movement. In some ways I thinking we are looking at something that is recurring, there have probably been “hipster Christian” enclaves since the beginning of hip, Christian beats in the 50s, christian flappers in the 20s, Christian bohemians hanging out with Toulouse-Lautrec, but it is easiest to see a movement that is comparable what McCraken proposes we have today with the hippies and the Jesus Freak movement. That said his history of Christian cool, is enlightening, and gave me some people and pop culture artifacts I want to look more into.

The chapter on Hipster Christians looks mostly at the popular culture the consume, and how they are both alike and different from hipster culture at large. Though there are some interesting ideas in the chapter, it really doesn’t come alive until he refers to the commentary he has made during his critique of the culture later in the book. The look at hipster churches is one of the most interesting parts of the book. McCracken looks at churches from all over the country, as well as one in London and one in France. Each of the churches is very different, both from the average church and from each other. What struck me from reading about each church was that what made it “hip” wasn’t some program, cool worship, or trendy leader, but that it was thoroughly authentic to its community. The hipster church in Kansas City looks and acts drastically different from the one in Chicago or London. One couldn’t start a church here in Mobile by importing the DNA from a church in Brooklyn and have it be hip.

The idea of trying to replicate the DNA of cool churches leads the the beginning of his critique of the current culture of hip in the church. Every pastor needs to read chapter 10 “Wannabe Hip Churches.” I think we all have the desire for our church to influence the community, one of the effects of this desire is to try too hard to be cool, to make it easy for those outside of the church culture to come in. McCracken shows the pit falls of this thought pattern and some warning signs that you might not be hip at all but just a wannabe. It will convict even the “coolest” of pastors to rethink whether the are truly being themselves or just trying to be who they think others want them to be.

In the last few chapters McCraken looks at the inconstancies between hip and Christianity, and try to see if there are any ways to reconcile the two. How can someone be both a rebellious, individualistic hipster, and community oriented follower of Christ? He asks good questions, and though he does suggest some answers he more importantly leads the reader into asking even more questions. End the end the answer is authenticity, hipster churches and leaders are cool just because they are, not because they try to be.

If you’ve ever wondered what is going on with the young people in the church, or those kids from the youth group that left and have not come back you need to give this book a read. If you are one of those twenty-somethings, or early thirty-somethings who left, you need to read this book too. It might just lead you to look for a church that embodies some of the ideas the McCracken puts forth as good in the hipster sub-culture of Christianity.