Stuff Christian College Kids Don’t Like
05 Dec, 2012 - Kristen Gaylord
Just a few months after graduating from a Christian college, I found an article that encapsulated the curiousness of the community I was leaving. Called “One Island Under God,” it was based on a Facebook conversation by authors Anna Scott and Brian Buell that listed a very specific category: stuff Christian college graduates like. The inventory of interests unearthed by Buell and Scott is jarringly familiar—and perplexing. It includes The Princess Bride, Sufjan Stevens, Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, “Social and/or sophisticated or exotic forms of smoking” (pipes, hookah, cloves, cigars), certain fantasy series (Harry Potter, Narnia, Lord of the Rings), and Settlers of Catan. Does anyone else feel like a pinned butterfly?
The authors didn’t seem able to explain exactly what held together this heterogeneous group, but Anna described its effects well:
The great success, the genius of the “Stuff White People Like” website was due to the fact that it struck a resonant chord: we all thought we were the only ones who liked Mos Def, watched Arrested Development or read the The New Yorker. The analogous list for Christians is one that, likewise, calls us out on the things in non-Christian or “secular” culture that we think are above stereotyping or pigeon-holing, because they are not overtly Christian, but, it turns out, are beloved by thousands of other young Christians.
I’m sure many readers could amend and update this list. I’d add Wendell Berry, Mumford and Sons, taking some sort of “stand” against technology (typewriters, Instagram filters or actual Polaroids, venerating people who don’t have Facebook), Wes Anderson, Iron & Wine, 19th century non-British “classics” (by Dostoevsky, Hugo, Tolstoy, Dumas), T.S. Eliot, the BBC, Abstract Expressionism, Frisbee golf, and the following words: “community,” “generative,” and “vocation.”
Granted, this is a pretty specific demographic, but it’s sizable: 20-something Protestant Christians, overwhelmingly from white and middle-class backgrounds. Why are so many of us drawn to this “stuff”? What are we looking for, and are we finding it?
Anna hints at one possibility with her placement of quotation marks around the word “secular,” and her hedging use of “overtly” before “Christian.” While many of the listed interests couldn’t be found in a Christian bookstore, they are “covertly” Christian: respectable yet not evangelical. Christians take pride in Sufjan Stevens’s faith, in the reputation of T.S. Eliot and J.R.R. Tolkien (“Did you know he was Christian?”), in the vaguely Biblical language of Iron & Wine and Mumford and Sons. While the trend Anna identifies is certainly true, I don’t think it entirely explains the appeal. There are other unifying characteristics of many, if not all, of these tastes we seem to independently develop: they are innocuous and nostalgic.
Why does this demographic tend to like Franny and Zooey more than Catcher in the Rye, or prefer 19th-century novels to 20th-century ones? Catcher in the Rye is more discomforting than Franny and Zooey: more specific, more despairing, more enraged. Similarly, 19th-century novels of the ilk mentioned before are grand, epic, and all-encompassing. Besides their treatment of faith, Hugo and Tolstoy condemn what is from our vantage point easily condemnable: serfdom, abuse of clerical power, lack of opportunities for women. In a sense, the outrages are on a level extreme enough to be generally agreed upon. While I’d argue that there is radicalism present in these works, they can also be appreciated at a safe level, with the particularities of their contexts detached enough from our own that any risk is neutralized.
Similarly with nonrepresentational art: although many of the Abstract Expressionists had all sorts of positions and intentions that young post-Christian-college adults would squirm at, the art itself asks nothing but aesthetic appreciation (in fact, the vacuum of defined referents is one of its greatest failings). It is not to everyone’s taste, yet very few people are actively offended by it. So, young Christians can justify their up-to-dateness, their participation in the “secular” world without danger: “I like modern art—I like Abstract Expressionism!”
What happens, as Anna identified, is that we construct a parallel pantheon to the “secular” one: young Christians find suitable alternatives to Precious Moments and the Left Behind books, but unwittingly stereotype themselves by the very act of their idiosyncratic congregation. By reading Tolstoy and listening to Iron & Wine we think we are somehow above the stereotypical Christian world. We choose things that neither side of the “Christian / secular” dichotomy can disagree with: we find our space in the middle of the Venn Diagram.
The possibility of “nostalgia” is a related desire, and a widespread one. Hence the pipe-smoking, Eliot-quoting, herb-growing, internet-disparaging 20-somethings that you and I both know. But I have to keep this nostalgia in quotation marks because it is false; it is longing for the idea of worlds that few of us have experienced: the fantastical realms, the sepia-tones of the Inklings’ England, the agrarian life.
It would be tempting to say that the referent is Edenic or Elysian, but that would be too easy, and not quite true. Besides the tautological argument that we can’t miss something none of us has actually experienced, it’s hard to imagine that these selections bear anything more than a glimmering resemblance to paradise. The particular realities of the world of the Inklings—of sexism and elitism and class privilege—or of agrarian existence—of hardship and insecurity and powerlessness—are not what we long for. But the distance imposed by time, and lack of firsthand experience, adds an attractive patina to complicated reality.
Thus, for this group of young, Christian-college twenty-somethings, charity work is good, but political work is iffy. Protesting against contemporary slavery is honorable, but protesting against discriminatory hiring prejudices might take things too far. Non-objective art is beautiful; feminist art is discomforting. Talking about community is commendable; talking about alternative economic systems is extreme. We, like Goldilocks, are uncomfortable with the “too hot” (The Guardian) or “too cold” (Focus on the Family)—we like our porridge “just right” (the BBC).
When Jesus called Christians to be “set apart,” this list of tastes is probably not what he had in mind. He was a blazing flame of extremity: having prostitutes over for dinner, calling his followers to be homeless, subverting social hierarchies. When he wasn’t lecturing about human universals, Jesus mucked around in the particulars of his context, modeling specific political and cultural revolutions at radical risk. I have a sneaking suspicion that to his fellow citizens, Jesus looked more like the Occupy movement than World Vision.
I am not trying to claim that we don’t need World Vision, but we do need something more. Young Christians should be the most radical of us, attracted not to the inoffensive but to the sharp and controversial. Too often we abstract the particular just to a level of palatability, through ideological detachment or historical displacement. We take a cotton ball, and then pull at it until all that is left is a soft mass of cotton. The abstracted form is beautiful, but the cotton ball was useful.
Further reading:
- “False nostalgia” among Catholics: “Morbid Symptoms”
- Evangelical cultural seclusion: “The Evangelical Hamster Ball”
- Irony, sincerity, and detachment: “How to Live without Irony”
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15 Comments
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December 05, 2012
“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.”
-Pauline Kael
There can be a hermetic quality to one’s experience when one spends a lot of time in a community focused on faith, education, the arts, etc. One might mistake the commonplace for the special .(“Oh, other people like Arrested Development. too???” ) One might, perhaps due to confirmation bias, mistake one’s own tastes for those of the community. One might mistake trivial details for salient features. (“But I saw he was listening to Sufjan Stevens on Spotify…)” One might assume that the community’s stated values and membership criteria drive perceived group tastes rather than broader cultural dynamics and demographics. The reality is that, until you have lived outside the community for a decent spell, you won’t have an adequate vantage point from which to observe and to make sense of the distinctives of the subculture of which you were a part.
That said, don’t stop trying.
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December 05, 2012
Well written and thought provoking; I do feel shockingly pinholed, and I appreciate the insight into why we might share those commonalities.
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December 06, 2012
Great article! Some thoughts:
- Once a young Christian decides to be radical, her efforts are swept up into another stream, and she ceases to be identified as Christian. Christian School Jenny, after pitching her tent on Wall Street, is now Occupier Jenny, and falls outside of your sample group.
- Perhaps we like Tolstoy and Sufjan not because they’re inoffensive, but because they represent the subtleties of our views more closely than, say, feminist literature or protest songs.
- Would blazing political, rhetorical, or aesthetic extremity really be seen as “set apart” today?
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December 12, 2012
Emailed!
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December 07, 2012
Well said, Matt, and thanks for your thoughts. It’s true that any community can become hermetic, and we should always be cognizant of that!
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December 07, 2012
I have found that one helpful check to the impulse to offer broad characterizations of one’s college community is to reflect on the differences and disputes one had with one’s chosen roommates. At that level of relationship, even shared tastes can break down over of varying degrees and types of appreciation.
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December 07, 2012
Thanks for this article Kristen! It lead to several great conversations with friends on Facebook.
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December 08, 2012
“You might be a ____ if” lists have been around since before Jeff Foxworthy, and they’re usually funny and sometimes revealing. Buell and Scott’s list is neither. When they write “it turns out that all across the country, at other Christian colleges and among other Christian small groups, this game was catching on like wildfire,” I see evidence of someone who isn’t talking to anyone who isn’t a Christian. And Mumford and Sons lyrics are vaguely Biblical because, well, they’re vague. You can read whatever you want into them.
I found that the cultural discussion in this article was largely disjoint from and distracted me from the exhortations in your closing paragraphs. Next time we sit down to play the Seafarers expansion, let’s discuss how Jesus was more Socialist than Objectivist, or the systematic abuse of young black men by the American criminal justice system. Or feminism. Then let’s figure out what we can do about it.
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December 12, 2012
Deal!
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December 09, 2012
Kristen, I appreciate your article. Coming from a similar background (I attended Samford University) I can relate to much of what you describe. I think one of the important things I learned was that I didn’t have to like what that particular Christian subculture was liking. I don’t have to like Mumford and Sons. I can think Sufjan is more crazy than genius. I think what you are aiming at in this article (correct me if I am wrong) is how strong a hold acceptance has on each of us. We want desperately to be socially accepted, and in the Christian subcultures we find cadres that have their own codes and language. It was really freeing for me to finally get to a place where I wasn’t defining myself by my likes, my status updates, my appreciation for Wendell Berry, or my ability to talk extensively about community and vocation, but instead was able to find my identity more in what Christ says about me: I am His. Anyways, really enjoyed your article, and I would say that maybe the angst of your last two paragraphs is due in large measure to our preoccupation with abstract ideas/ideals rather than our concrete love of people?
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December 10, 2012
Thanks, Kristen! I tried to thank you a while ago but the commenting has been glitchy.
I appreciate knowing that, Jonathan! It led to some great Facebook and email conversations for me, also. I’ve thought about posting excerpts from the thoughtful anecdotes, counterpoints, and critiques that I’ve received.
Mark, your choice of the word “angst” made me laugh. It’s right on! I was much more deliberate and careful with my “descriptive” passage (I am, after all, a graduate student) but once I got to the semi-artificial “prescriptive” ending I stumbled a bit. Cheers to lessening angst and deepening love!
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December 11, 2012
I find these “conversations” about nostalgia, and the clustering behavior of college students tiresome and unhelpful. Particularly when they are over-spiritualized with cliched references to how radical Jesus was and how dull late-teens Christians are.
What is it we expect from these post-pubescent adolescents? College IS now the time when a person breaks forth from the confines of family into a world where they have no “tribe” in order to find out how and where they belong. Why it takes this form and takes so long is hardly unique to religious people. And that we all get to watch it happen on the internet only amplifies how annoying this is to anyone who is no longer dealing with this phase. Furthermore, college is already a hyper-isolated period when individuals are continually surrounded by people exactly like them. It’s no wonder they act the way do. Why the surprise and exasperation?
This is a cultural issue that has far less to do with the particular aesthetic choices the group isolated in this article takes, and much more to do with the lack of impetus put on the idea of “growing up.”
And it is not the current generation who is solely at fault for this. Rather, this moment was prepared for them by the previous one that embraced the fallacy of forever upward and onward without the ass-busting work it takes to do that. The helicopter-parenting, ego-protecting, 17th-place-ribbon-handing-out generation, perhaps out of rejecting of the hard and tough style of their parents, failed to instill the sense of discipline and focus and true freedom that it inherited, however difficultly.
And, the great American narrative of unending progress is no help either.
This is the inevitable problem of constant progress and economic development. Just like when a sports team starts to believe it’s good simply because of the name on the jersey, and stops doing the things that made it great, so too can we simply expect that we’ll have a great life because it’s America. But, it’s not the generation that started thinking that way that loses games, it’s the one after it which does. The one never grew up or knew those built the tradition of winning by the sweat and effort. This generation.
It is being said that this next generation may be the first whose lives are NOT better off than there parents. A staggering assertion that will no doubt send many back to the past to relive the “good old days” they were never a part of because the world they are about to inherit is being sold to them as pretty shitty.
Additionally, the complaint about nostalgia-seeking and golden-age syndrome is so continually present in our society that Woody Allen made a movie about it. At times we all romanticize the past, and eventually realize that we can’t go back there and the problems which it had perhaps exceed those we don’t want to face. This isn’t an issue related to college-kids and hipness. It’s a human problem. And it goes ALL the way back to the exodus.
We long to go back to our past because we don’t believe in the future. It is unknowable and uncertain. Every person shares this fear. With one exception. Those that claim to be followers of Christ KNOW the future. The future he created is already in this moment. It is a lack of faith in, or perhaps knowledge of, the promises of the One who never fails to deliver. Within the church I would argue that the lack of presence of this attitude in the accused audience is the partial result of the failure of those that came before to pass on the message of how this God was faithful all through time. It is a lack of appreciation of the past and its stories and traditions that fails us in the present. It is likewise a lack of faith in victory of the King that hamstrings our future.
None of this is generationally specific. We are all at fault in some way. Nor is it aesthetic. It is not about mustaches, PBR, bowling, franklin stoves, record players and Tolstoy. (And, when is it ever wrong to read Tolstoy, even if one is doing it with an insincere motivation? Does not the power of great art works of transcend both the author’s intent and the user’s purposes?)
Let’s put away the juvenile complaining about how others act (all the while acting just like them in the complaint) and move on to better and more enriching things. Perhaps if those of us no longer still searching for ourselves in the same way as these kids, stopped whining over and paying attention to the attention-seekers, and got busy enjoying life and future, we’d model a world where you can like whatever the hell you want to like with no regard to whether or not it helps you crack the “inner ring.”
(Oops quoted C.S. Lewis there. I guess I only like him because he’s a cool Christian.)
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December 11, 2012
@Kevin: You can like whatever you want, but if someone finds themselves mostly liking things from Kristen’s list they might have become a cliche.
Jesus and his followers were not cool. They were losers. So I think if someone is liking the things they like “without giving a damn how the rest of the world feels about it” (to quote CS Lewis) they are going to end up liking some very very uncool things. (Wrestlemania, The Power Rangers, Cheesy Christian Music, and Jesus to name a few).
I think the first thing Jesus demands on the altar is our coolness. After all we did “get saved” … what could possibly be less cool than that?
Sorry we might be in complete agreement and I haven’t realized it.
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December 11, 2012
@Andrew: I think we agree in that by liking that which one likes without regard for how it positions one socially, one risks being “uncool.”
However, your list of uncool things is arbitrary and entirely subjective. Those thing might make you uncool to a crowd that despises them, but cool to the crowd that loves them. Discussing the artistic merits and value of those things in and of themselves is not yet part of this argument.
I don’t agree that the first thing Jesus demands of his followers is to put “coolness” on the altar. That is impossible as coolness is not truly a “thing” that is the same for all. Jesus, at least according to how it seems to be portrayed in the Bible, does demand to put on the altar those things which first and foremost prevent one from actually following him. It does not follow that that thing is always coolness. (Again, a fleeting and entirely relative concept.)
Why do you read The Curator? Is it because you think it good in a vacuum of objectivity wherein what you like and how you express those tastes are not influenced by those with whom you associate? Quite unlikely I’d suggest. Our tastes and cultural desires are shaped in large part by the community in which we find ourselves and the one in which we might want to be.
So then, must I continually ask myself, “do I only like this thing because someone I admire, or some group I would like to be a part of likes it?” Shackles!
This preoccupation with and what why people gravitate to each other and like similar things is a nuisance. That process can’t be stopped. And it’s not wrong to want to belong to a group of people inherently. If, for the Christian person, that longing ultimately leads one away from the following of Jesus, then there is a problem. Otherwise, isn’t the real complaint here that we want people “to think for themselves, just like I do?”
This very ascertain is exactly the same behavior that creates the clusters which this article attempts to deride. My complaint is that the discussion about what groups of people cluster around, and how naive they are in their striving for acceptance by way of liking similar cultural objects is fruitless.
It is the very process of clustering around like desires, and adapting desires to the group, that helps Christians be more Christlike. That process is not bad. Just because the author doesn’t like the results of those instincts is her issue. This same issue was had with Thomas Kinkade and other Christian Kitsch. So Christians began liking things that were, to some more “high brow” and here the complaint comes back again.
The author contends that “young Christians find suitable alternatives to Precious Moments and the Left Behind books, but unwittingly stereotype themselves by the very act of their idiosyncratic congregation.”
Every preference cluster is a stereotype to some other preference cluster. The fact that it may be “unwitting” in this instance is actually to their credit. It’s what makes it actually sincere.
In fact, I am stereotyping the author right now into the group of higher-than-thou-super-high-brow-chrisitans-who-don’t-like-it-when-other-groups-like-things-they-find-unlikeable-especially-in-large-numbers. This is a growing group hence my frustration with his preference cluster that makes me part of the…
And that can go on and on forever. Preferences change. Clusters change. Everyone will change. My hope would be that change would be towards a deeper, evermore enriching and sincere experience of cultural offerings.
Let’s back off the college kids for a minute. The maturation process is an important thing for anyone, regardless of when they begin it. Of course when we look back we think of how silly our actions and tastes where “then” to us now. But that reflection does not give us the right to press those in the middle of the process to shortcut it in order to make some people less annoyed.
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December 12, 2012
There comes a point in life where you realize (and perhaps even make peace with the fact) that, for the most part, you are ordering off the menu. The fact that someone saw fit to manufacture, package and sell an item is probably a good indicator that you and your cadre are not alone in your preference for an item. The fact that the proper names set forth in this article are recognizable to a large audience might be an indicator that they hold appeal beyond any narrow demographic. I seem to recall that, back when I attended a Christian college, we had a penchant for bread and circuses, fun and games and, with varying degrees of abstinence and indulgence, sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll. But maybe that was just me.
