WHERE MY PEEPS AT?:

Christian Cool and the New Generation Gap (JOHN LELAND, 5/16/04, NY Times)

FOR evidence of generational upheaval these days, you might skip over the usual suspects - sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll - and consider instead the church.

Two decades after baby boomers invented the suburban megachurch, which removed intimidating crosses or stained-glass images of Jesus in favor of neutral environments, their children are now wearing "Jesus Is My Homeboy" T-shirts.

As mainline churches scramble to retain young people, these worshipers have gained attention by creating alternative churches in coffee bars and warehouses and publishing new magazines and Bibles that come on as anything but church.

But does a T-shirt really serve the faith? And if religion is our link to the timeless, what does it mean that young Christians replace their parents' practices?

The movement "has a noble side," said Michael Novak, the conservative theologian at the American Enterprise Institute. He himself remembers how much he enjoyed the Christian comic books of his youth. He compared the alt-evangelicals to missionaries, who "feel they've learned something valuable from their faith and want to share it" using the native language.

"But in boiling it down, trying to make it relevant, you leave out the hard edges and the complicated points," he said. "You make the faith less than it is."

Yet for many in this generation, the worship of their parents feels impersonal - not bigger than their daily, media-intensified lives, but smaller. Their search is for unfiltered religious experience.

"My generation is discontent[ed] with dead religion," said Cameron Strang, 28, founder of Relevant Media, which produces Christian books, a Web site and Relevant magazine, a stylish 70,000-circulation bimonthly that addresses topics like body piercing, celibacy, extreme prayer, punk rock and God.

"We don't want to show up on Sunday, sing two hymns, hear a sermon and go home," Mr. Strang said. "The Bible says we're supposed to die for this thing. If I'm going to do that, this has to be worth something. Our generation wants a tangible experience of God who is there."

If Christ were among us in these times, we'd surely know it as the "Sermon on NBC", not "on the Mount." Gotta evangelize where the people are.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 30, 2004 7:56 AM