Hipsters in Christ? (from John Frye)

“In Christ there is no Hipster or non-Hipster” (by John Frye)

A few posts back I wrote a parody on the “Woman at the Well” story as if she had encountered a hipster, post-evangelical Jesus. Scot McKnight informed me that the post took a life of its own. I certainly enjoyed the banter within the comments. My aim was to help us step back and take a good look at ourselves and laugh, i.e., to not take ourselves too seriously.

I had no one person or group in mind. I am fascinated by all the cool vocabulary that hipsters spin out these days in an attempt to “contextualize” the faith. And I am all for contextualizing the faith. Some pushback was that the hipsters couldn’t recognize themselves or anyone they knew in the post. Thankfully, that’s good thing. Because the burden of the post was that no matter who we are, hipster or not, we must not give away the store in our attempts to market the evangelical faith in our postmodern, post-evangelical world.

I think we need to keep asking, “Who’s minding the store?” It’s a question as old as Jude 3, “Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.” As most recognize, “the faith” in the verse is a set of irrevocable Christian beliefs. I really enjoy theological innovation. I am not anxious as some are to question theological ideas. It’s not good if any of us ascribe ‘inerrancy’ or ‘infallibility’ to our theological formulations. Flat earth, anyone? Anyone?

For example, here at Jesus Creed lots of conversation has been had about what Scot terms “the soterian gospel.” This extremely reduced edition of the biblical gospel has not been healthy for the church in the West. It was designed to get people to make decisions, not designed to create cruciform disciples. Yet, even this discussion of the gospel is set within an even a greater conversation, i.e., the hot potato labeled “justification by faith alone,” being re-examined by N. T. Wright and others. On issues of this magnitude we know that in Christ there is neither hipster nor non-hipster.

We are contending for real doctrinal issues with the biblical text as our source. There is a faith to contend for (that began a long time before Martin Luther and John Calvin ever showed up) and it’s the duty of the Church to contend well. The living, triune God speaking through the Scriptures by the Spirit is always working to help the Church discern the truth.  I do believe that theology-making is a fascinating human enterprise and because it is human, it will have our fallible fingerprints all over it. No one can say, “Well there! That’s all done.” Reformed and reforming is a good motto.

Do you think it’s important to have someone minding the store?

Who’s minding the store? Well, I can tell you who’s not. No one little ghetto of preferred theology-makers and -keepers is minding it. They may think so, but hey, the Essenes thought they were the chosen, too. How did that work out? The Church, this enduring, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, redeemed Family, minds the store and we need to carefully listen to one another, including the hipsters.