BoingBoing today writes a post about a “hipster church” in Seattle called Mars Hill (pointing to a longer article in Salon). Pretty interesting stuff.

I’ve been going to what some might call a “hipster church” here in Philadelphia called Circle of Hope. But that tag really bugs me. Sure, 90% of the kids at my church have tattoos. A bunch of them huddle outside services to smoke cigarettes. Everyone’s got tasseled hair. There are lots of beards. Half of us are in bands. Most of us live in an artsy ghetto.

But what makes us intensely different than the church explored in this Salon article, is that we are anything but fundamentalists. I admire those guys for trying to be different, to try and “sell” Jesus to down-and-out hipsters. But it seems like (at least according to the article) that they are way into the Fire & Brimstone spiel. FEAR.

The thing I love about the Circle of Hope is that it is populated by people who have rejected the mainstream version of American Protestantism and have begun to re-invent what it means to be an active body of believers. We are in the process of deconstructing an oppressive and destructive world view that was enforced upon many of us and has dominated the American political discourse for 50 years, and are building something new in its place. In some ways our views reflect an old-school throwback to who Jesus really was… a prophet walking around the country side with a band of hippies in tow, preaching love and peace and inner contentment, a philosophy that led directly to the downfall of the great empire and its stranglehold on his people.

That’s what we want to do. The people at Circle are working hard towards digging into our local neighborhood (one of the poorest, murder stricken urban areas in the country). We’re putting our actions before our words, in many ways. We’re not out to “save” anyone. We try to make an increasingly confusing and complex world more sane. An unlivable world more humane. We answer God’s call to love our neighbors. We’re radicals.

Yet many of us are angry. Angry at a conservative, ignorant America. Angry at how a church that preaches peace and love can BE just the opposite. Angry that society has only been able to make life more difficult and complicated, not easier and simplified. But we’re changing ourselves. Because the first way anyone can change the world for the better is to change oneself.

But while we work to deconstruct many of those dangerous, near-sighted teachings that have plagued us, we haven’t lost hope that once dismantled, divinity will guide us to constructing a new, healthy paradigm.

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