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May 13, 2006
Evangelicool!
Seattle's alt-weekly The Stranger recently published a really interesting cover story by Erica Barnett about the rise of evangelical hipsterdom in that city.
They tend to meet in unconventional venues—theaters, warehouses, coffee shops—that lack the trappings of traditional churches and make younger worshippers feel at home. They use creative approaches to worship and spiritual reflection—such as pop music, dialogue (rather than sermonizing), and meditation—and lack a strong hierarchical structure. They generally start out small—often as an offshoot of a larger, more established congregation—and then grow rapidly, like Mars Hill, or multiply, as Church on the Hill plans to do. They believe in being engaged in, rather than separate from, the culture at large, as a way of both remaining relevant and winning new converts to Christianity.
The article's biggest strength is its choice of subject, Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill, who is, um, kind of a nutjob. Barnett mostly lets Driscoll's own words demonstrate as much.
"Seattle logic [says] two consenting adults can have sex whenever they want," Driscoll booms, sardonically. "This is what happens when you walk away from Scripture: You walk away from what's right and wrong." The next thing you know, he says, "You've got a rainbow on your camel. You've got pink taffeta on your toga. You've got a church float in the pride parade." Pacing the stage restlessly ("I've had a lot of Red Bull"), Driscoll continues. "The people of the church are so confused. They think that in tolerating [homosexual] behavior, they're being like Jesus. Your banners, your floats, your buttons—they're not good. It's just like letting cancer come into a body... until the cancer consumes the body and kills you... We will extricate the cancer, and if that person who has the cancer is repentant and wants to kill the cancer, then we'll welcome them back. But they have to accept that anything but one man, one woman, one God, one life, is sexually immoral.Driscoll is loud and a bit slovenly and frequently hilarious; he uses humor to draw facile comparisons ("We all discriminate. I double-dog dare you: Don't recycle. You'll have hippies in your garbage: 'I found paper!'")—and make claims that put him far outside the mainstream—that go down easy among his young congregation. He has reportedly lost some female congregants because of his statements about the role of women in marriage ("God made the man and put him in charge and gave him a job description... and the woman was made to help him...Women will be saved by going back to that role that God has chosen for them."); in the church ("Every single book in your Bible is written by a man... Priest[hood] is reserved exclusively for godly men."); and in society ("There is no occasion where women led a society and were its heads and the men complied and followed. ... It's a matter of Biblical creation.")
As counterpoint, Barnett interviews United Methodist minister Rich Lang, who I've been lucky enough to see speak at a church conference a few years back; he stunned the audience into silence by chewing us out for having so many SUVs in the parking lot...but he's such a compelling preacher that by the time he was done he recieved a well-earned standing ovation. Lang provides a voice for progressive mainline Christians like me, who are dismayed by the dressing up of archaic evangelical theology in horn-rimmed glasses and thrift-store t-shirts. (The website for Lang's congregation, Trinity United Methodist, provides some of his really great essays and sermons, including one of the best condemnations of Bush policy on theological grounds I've ever seen.)
Barnett could be criticized for painting with too broad a brush. She doesn't seem to quite know her history and terminology--for example, that emergent churches are a post-evangelical phenomenon, not post-mainline--which is actually pretty important for understanding the social dynamics at work. She quotes Jason Hudson of Church on the Hill preaching about what Christians should do when they find themselves in positions of power and suggests that his sermon "echoes" dominion theology--in fact to me it reads like a partial refutation of dominion theology--I'd have to hear the rest of the sermon to be sure. And for Barnett to talk about the "emergent" movement without talking about the legitimately progressive voices within that movement (Brian McLaren being the most prominent) is a pretty severe oversight.
Still it's really nice to see The Stranger at least TRYING to cover religion in a way that warns us of its most dangerous manifestations but doesn't depict Christianity as a monolithically conservative entity.
Hey Portland dudes, I'm curious, how does this article jibe with what you've seen going on down there in places like Imago Dei?
UPDATE: The Stranger published my letter to the editor, thus marking the first time I've ever called someone an asshole in print! Totally embarassing, especially because I didn't say what i meant. What I meant was that the emergent church couldn't fairly be called theologically liberal, but that it does somewhat trouble the left-right binary models of politics and theology, and has led some participants to relatively progressive/moderate positions on various social and economic issues.
Posted by Kevin at May 13, 2006 5:38 PM
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Comments
Mark Driscoll is INSANE. I'm familiar with him from the mid/late nineties, when Mars Hill ran a popular message board called Midrash. Driscoll would sign in as "William Wallace II" and berate men for being pansies and women for being butch. Awful, awful stuff - and, ironically, in large part responsible for me becoming the liberal feminist post-evangelical Christian I am today. Because even though I didn't know what I was at the time, I knew I definitely wasn't that which Mark Driscoll represented. So thanks, William Wallace II!
Posted by: kate at May 19, 2006 12:56 PM
"WILLIAM WALLACE II?" Kate, this is truly incredible. I no longer feel guilty for calling him an asshole.
Posted by: Kevin at May 20, 2006 4:12 AM
Kevin, do you know that there is a church in Mt Vernon that completes the trifecta of NW conservative evangelical hipster churches? It's called The Gathering. They have Radiohead/Coldplay style worship music and the pastor there is a young hip dude who exhorts wives to submit to their husbands, etc. I went there a couple times back in 2002 but quickly realized their "openness" was a bit of a sham. Dude's not as extreme as Mark Driscoll but still. You should go and check it out.
Posted by: Alex at May 24, 2006 5:28 PM
It really seems like new wine in old wineskins to me. Though I am not opposed to dialogue and openness in worship, there is something to be said about pandering to everybody's desires for a particular form of worship.
As a mainliner, I am appalled with some of the things that evangelical preachers get away with, and then run off and call themselves postmodern or some other label that implies the ability to critically engage culture and theology, when all they are doing is repackaging the same bull**** with a rock beat instead of an organ
grace and peace
Posted by: Jason at June 5, 2006 5:59 PM
This might be interesting for you to read.
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11710
Posted by: Chris at July 11, 2006 1:29 PM
It seems Driscoll is always getting himself in trouble.
I know Mars Hill is 'hip' & all that, but the inclusive nature of postmodernism is hardly evident there, especially with the likes of Driscoll.
Posted by: gredaadt at August 3, 2006 3:37 PM