Are you a Christian hipster?

A friend passed along a link to this post, laying out a set of criteria for Christian hipsterness. Among them:

Christian hipsters like music, movies, and books that are well-respected by their respective artistic communities--Christian or not. They love books like Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider, God's Politics by Jim Wallis, and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. They tend to be fans of any number of the following authors: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, John Howard Yoder, Walter Brueggemann, N.T. Wright, Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Anne Lamott, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Henri Nouwen, Soren Kierkegaard, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robison, Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, or anything ancient and/or philosophically important.

Christian hipsters love thinking and acting Catholic, even if they are thoroughly Protestant. They love the Pope, liturgy, incense, lectio divina, Lent, and timeless phrases like "Thanks be to God" or "Peace of Christ be with you." They enjoy Eastern Orthodox churches and mysterious iconography, and they love the elaborate cathedrals of Europe (even if they are too museum-like for hipster tastes). Christian hipsters also love taking communion with real Port, and they don't mind common cups. They love poetry readings, worshipping with candles, and smoking pipes while talking about God. Some of them like smoking a lot of different things.

Christian hipsters love breaking the taboos that used to be taboo for Christians. ...

It should be clear from this passage that the author is defining "Christian hipster" from an Evangelical point of view. Which is fine, but as a non-Evangelical Christian who somewhat fits this mold, it's hard for me to see what's "hip" about it. I suppose it makes sense if you contrast it with normative American middle-class Evangelicalism, but I really don't know. Evangelicals, what say you?

I think I know what the poster means by "Christian hipster" in one sense, though. I keep running into youngish Christians who go to churches with names that don't sound like churches, but rather experiences (e.g., "The Journey"). They tend to have good haircuts glistening with "product," but not to tuck their shirts in on Sunday morning (as opposed to the people with bad hair who don't tuck their shirts in on Sunday morning, also known as slobs).

What, though, would a Catholic hipster look like? Stuff that makes the Evangelical "hipster" list doesn't really work in a Catholic context. The Catholic church is so broad, and has so many niches that are authentically Catholic, that it's hard to find a normative "squareness" to define oneself against. One of the greatest hipsters of all, Francis of Assisi, a guy who was so whacked-out for Christ that he took his clothes off in the city square to show that he was renouncing his family's wealth and privilege, became one of the Roman church's greatest saints. How do you compete with that? And what would an Orthodox hipster look like? Maybe like these guys?

Rather than the superficial term "hipster," the more meaningful term for Christians of any tradition is "radical." A hipster is just playing at being radical. Dorothy Day wasn't a hipster. Neither was Soren Kierkegaard. Then again, a "Christian hipster" is an identifiable type: a Christian, usually under 40, who's kind of arty and who stands at ironic distance from the main body of his contemporary tradition. It's a definite sensibility, and I guess I dabble in it without really meaning to. I'd rather be a Christian radical than a Christian hipster, though. source>>>

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