Young people turn against their parents' 'church lite'

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

Two decades after baby boomers invented the suburban megachurch, which removed 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 worshippers 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 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.

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

"My generation is discontented 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.

Strang, a graduate of Oral Roberts University, is in some ways a model alt-evangelical, with two earrings, a shaved head and beard. He left a megachurch, he said, because he felt no community at the slick services. Now he attends an alternative church in a school gym, with intimate groups and basketball after services.

This stylistic shift is critical, said Lee Rabe, pastor at Threads, an alternative, or "emerging," church in Kalamazoo, Mich. Where megachurches reached out to baby boomers turned off by church, the younger generation often has no experience with religion. They need to be beguiled, not assuaged, Rabe said.

"The deity-free 'church lite' of the megachurches, that's the last thing these people want," he said. "They want to talk about God. It's hard-core, not in a fire and brimstone way, but it has to be raw, real."

The changes are often more stylistic than doctrinal. Many alt-evangelicals espouse conservative theology, but reject the censure of some churches. Strang sees this as a blueprint for an evangelical left.

"We're all sinners," he said. "Your sin isn't any worse than my sin. We don't say, 'Stop the horrible gays.' You want to reach them, you don't want to protest them. If we looked like goody-two-shoes, clean cut, we couldn't have a conversation with our lesbian friend at the coffee shop, because she couldn't relate."

Increasingly, this conversation borrows from pop culture, in the same way that hip secular culture borrows the cabala and the cross.

Critics say this engagement comes at a price. Timothy Williams, 48, a pastor at Sound Doctrine Ministries, a non-denominational church in Enumclaw, Wash., sees flirtation with pop culture as a capitulation to sin. "More and more, the church is seeking to be like the world around it," said Williams, who has written a pamphlet denouncing Christian rock. "But the Bible says that anyone who becomes a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. If we're going to be relevant or on the world's level to draw people, we might as well give free beer in the parking lot."

But evangelicals have long used pop culture and new technology to spread their gospel, said Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University.

Christian tracts handed out in the 19th century were one of the first mass media. In the 1930s, the evangelist Charles Fuller used the new medium of radio to broadcast his sermons. Four decades later, the Jesus movement of the 1970s adopted the vibe of the 1960s counterculture.

The actor Stephen Baldwin, a born-again Christian, has just directed a DVD called Livin' It, pairing extreme sports with faith testimony, from which he hopes to spin skate Bibles, clothing, CDs and Bible-study guides, all tied to a non-profit youth ministry.

"This could be the first get-down rock 'n' roll, cool Christian brand," he said.

The underlying romance is familiar from any Nirvana video: the Christian as rebel or outsider, misunderstood, struggling against a world of conformity, commercialism and manufactured pleasures.

"It's a countercultural thing," said Tim Lucas, 33, pastor of an emerging ministry called Liquid in Basking Ridge, N.J. On a recent Sunday, Lucas wore a Hawaiian shirt and used images from The Lord of the Rings movies and a clip from Amadeus in a sermon about the book of First Samuel.

"They identify with being an underground movement, which is what Christianity was in the beginning," Lucas said of his congregation. "Living out a life with Christ at the center draws a lot of flak. Not a lot of people will celebrate that."

The movement away from middle-of-the-road theology and worship mirrors a trend on college campuses, where growing numbers of students claim either no religion or strong religious affiliation, with the middle ground shrinking, said Alexander Astin, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, which last year completed a national study of students' beliefs.

In the survey, more than 70 percent of students said they prayed, discussed religion or spirituality with friends, found religion personally helpful and gained spiritual strength by trusting in a higher power.

What I see among Catholics at least is young people tend to be much more conservative. I count myself among that number, I am too young to remember pre-vatican II masses but I enjoy the Latin mass, indeed the folksy norvo ordo masses have little or no impact on me. I see predominantly young people in the more conservative parishes, where the older crowder seems to prefer to the newer mass.

That's true. I'm a member of the younger generation too, (though I'm part of a Lutheran/Calvinist congregation) and I much prefer the traditional services as well. I wish that our current church would stop prancing around the issues and actually dive into the grit of faith and the tough questions that come with it.

I'm 35, and I definitely prefer a more contemporary service; I just find the traditional services too repetitive and dry; but that's my preference. What I cannot understand is how someone would want to attend a service held totally in Latin, unless they understood Latin... what's the point? Just because it sounds cool? When I go to church, I want to hear and understand God's word -- I think that's what He wants for me, too. I am not intending to be irreverent or disrespectful here, just expressing my confusion as to why a Latin service would be preferable.

As to the repetitive mantra about large churches being impersonal, I don't necessarily agree with this. If a person is committed to knowing Christ and being in fellowship with other believers, he/she will be able to attend smaller group Bible studies, etc. in larger churches and develop close friendships with others. Even in a smaller church, such as mine, if someone just attends the Sunday services and bolts, never getting involved in other ways, it is just as impersonal as if they had attended a service in a 5000-seat amphitheater; what I'm trying to say is some of the responsibility rests with the believer, too.

I would say that among Catholic church-goers, the young tend to be more conservative. Liberalism told Catholics there was no such thing as grave sin, so they feel there is no reason to go to Church on Sundays once they have received their sacraments of initiation, until it is time to enroll their kids in CCD. The fact that a Catholic attends mass marks them either as a conservative or a liberal activist. (Many liberals attend mass so they can be a part of the parish community when it comes time to making decisions.) The fact that a Catholic goes to confession marks them as a right-wing, lunatic fringe element whack-job by the definitions of the "mainstream" media.

Well, I'm younger than you and I don't see a problem with Latin. I prefer it to English when sung (and I'm a classically trained soprano). Having the readings and the homily in the vernacular I have no problem accepting, but the language of the Eucharistic Prayer is so...banal. The current translation of the Creed is wrong in the first two words.

My parish is over 1,000 families and not unfriendly, but Catholic, so it's not an effusive friendliness. People are free to be pious and savor the quiet and beauty of the church. I happen to like it. Some don't.

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