Poser Christianity

Dr. James K.A. Smith offers a critique of Brett McCracken’s Hipster Christianity, insisting that McCracken is really addressing posers more than hipsters. It’s an interesting article and I think it raises some good critiques. The critique itself is, I think, a bit more harsh than it needed to be. Here’s a good summary quote:

…his analysis only works if, in fact, all hipsters are really just posers. That is, McCracken effectively reduces all hipsters to posers precisely because he can only imagine someone adopting such a lifestyle in order to be cool. Let me say it again: this tells us more about McCracken than it does about those young Christians who are spurning conservative, bourgeois values.