Digging through the pile of "un-read" newspapers this morning, I ran across an article in Sunday's Startlegram about "Christian Counterculture". The article was reporting lite, but basically mentioned briefly several supposedly counterculture christian movements, mostly built around a certain style of music or skateboarding.

Those movements are not really counter-culture, but sub-culture movements. Similar to the Jesus Movement, although they deny it, they are involved in a sub-culture and they impose it on their practice of Christianity. Although they complain about suburban culture and that everyone in the church has a house and two cars, to be in their church you have to like a certain type of music, dress a certain way, and speak a defined and limited lingo and have the right kind of facial hair.

It is really trite. Pardon the bluntness, but I lived on the fringe of the Jesus Movement in college. It was not all bad, and did attract some new people into the faith. It did, in some cases, seek a purer and simpler Christianity. But, as things progressed, it degenerated into stupid bumper stickers, music that imitated the music popular with college students at the time and a dress code. Sure, the code did not include coats and ties or panty hose. But you were not accepted into the groups if you did not have long hair, bell bottom jeans and funky shoes. It was good for me, because I was a fashion hippy. By that I mean I did not do drugs or believe in free love, but I really liked the clothes. The Jesus Movement allowed me to be a fashion hippy and a Christian. That made you a Jesus Freak, by the way.

The only thing more trite than a skateboard church trying to maintain it is radical and pure is the 40 and 50 year old who thinks he can imitate the dress, lingo and facial hair and appeal to the kids on that basis.

Pardon me for being jaded. One thing about living a while is, you see things continue to come and go, and people try to tell you it is new, when it is not.

Pure and simple faith would be a devotion to following Christ to the extent of divorcing yourself from culture and counter culture. When you do that, let me know. Otherwise, it's just the same old thing: youthful rebellion against the parent's generation.

Been there, done that and threw away the t-shirt.