I’m not alone. Young Catholics feel hungry because we’re being fed candy when we want steak. We feel talked down to because the faith has been made juvenile to appeal to our pop-culture interests. We are immersed in pop-culture, every day. We want to know that our religion transcends fashion and trends, that it is unique and worthy of respect, that it is the one religion out of thousands of competing religions that God wants us to belong to. We want a religion that hasn’t been dumbed-down, painstakingly stripped of every shred of mystery and remade in the image and likeness of men. We want the True Faith, not, as one of my theology professors called it, “a bubble-gum chewing religion of suburban good cheer.”
It’s an insult to our intelligence to say we won’t be compelled by the real thing. Give us substance and we will fill the pews.
Now how does this mesh with the burgeoning interest in Emergent Church stuff in the evangelical world, in which everything, including a heavy dose of pop culture is brought into worship (see this interesting article on the Mars Hill Church up Michigan way)
I agree with Steve, but I can’t deny the popularity (at least for now) of the engagement-with-pop-culture style of many protestant churches. Trying to make sense of it….
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