Young people are leaving the church in droves. Enter the hipster Christian leader intended to pull them back in.
It’s no secret in Christian circles that young people are leaving the church in droves, with Christian research firms finding over and overthat once there’s not a parent there to push them to church, the majority of high school kids drift away from religion once they move out of the house. Some come back, but some leave permanently.
One favorite solution is to try to make the church more hip by employing young, seemingly cool Christians who are in tune with modern pop culture as leaders. A lot of these young, hip Christians are actually quite progressive in their politics. In a lot of cases, however, the change from the cranky, judgmental church of old is purely aesthetic. If you scratch the surface of these seemingly with-it young Christian leaders, you’ll see they’re peddling the same old sex-negative, hyper-conservative intolerance that motivates their elders.
Here’s a list of some of the leaders who are trying to make conservative Christianity seem cool, and who generally fail because conservative Christianity is the exact opposite of cool.
1) Bradlee Dean. In many ways, Bradlee Dean epitomizes the Christian right overreaction to the fact that young people are ignoring religious fundamentalism in growing numbers. Many Christian leaders have taken to suggesting that Christianity should be more manly and aggressive to woo the young, and Dean took this to heart, starting You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International and the Christian rock band Junkyard Prophet, both of which embrace an over-the-top Harley motorcycle-influenced aesthetic. Dean had a habit of sneaking Christian propaganda into public schools by offering programs he portrayed as merely anti-drug to school administrators but once he was in front of the students, turned into Bible-thumping.
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