The New York Times on “Weird Christians”

An atheist pal of mine handed over this NY Times piece she thought I’d be interested in, the headline reads “The Future of Christianity Is Punk.” Kinda misleading as it’s an op ed piece that looks at a trend among millenials who are seeking out religious experiences that tend to towards the elaborate and archaic allied with a moral ethical sense at harsh odds with that of contemporary Evangelicals — who are the most spotlighted face of “conservative” Protestantiam. Very interesting tho.

“More and more young Christians, disillusioned by the political binaries, economic uncertainties and spiritual emptiness that have come to define modern America, are finding solace in a decidedly anti-modern vision of faith. As the coronavirus and the subsequent lockdowns throw the failures of the current social order into stark relief, old forms of religiosity offer a glimpse of the transcendent beyond the present.

“Many of us call ourselves ‘Weird Christians,’ albeit partly in jest. What we have in common is that we see a return to old-school forms of worship as a way of escaping from the crisis of modernity and the liberal-capitalist faith in individualism.

“Weird Christians reject as overly accommodationist those churches, primarily mainline Protestant denominations like Episcopalianism and Lutheranism, that have watered down the stranger and more supernatural elements of the faith (like miracles, say, or the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ). But they reject, too, the fusion of ethnonationalism, unfettered capitalism and Republican Party politics that has come to define the modern white evangelical movement.”