Afternoon Seminars & Workshops

 

BC-03 — Hipster Christianity: Between Irony and Earnestness, Cynicism and Hope

Brett McCracken

One of the pervasive attitudes among young people today is a deeply ingrained sense of irony, if not jadedness/cynicism. There are many reasons for this. Leaders have let us down, politicians have lied to us, the media is ever more untrustworthy. Advertising and images have twisted reality for as long as we've lived. But for Christians, how compatible are irony and cynicism with a faith that is fundamentally about hope? How do we move out of irony and into sincerity, where the beauty of the world enchants us again and we can let our guard down around people? What does cynicism do to our relationships with others and with God? This seminar will examine the cultural causes and effects of irony/cynicism through analysis and discussion of media texts, articles, and personal narratives. Special attention will be given to the “Christian hipster” culture and its positive and negative contributions to contemporary evangelical culture.

 

Brett McCracken — Journalist and author of Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide (Baker, 2010).  A graduate of Wheaton College and UCLA, Brett currently works as managing editor for Biola University's Biola Magazine and is pursuing a Master's in Theology at Talbot School of Theology. He writes regularly for Christianity Today and Relevant and has also written for The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Image, Q Ideas, Mediascape,and The Princeton Theological Review.