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All of which tends to support the twin theses of Beaudoin's book: that the so-called Generation X is profoundly, if ambiguously, concerned with religious questions and symbols, and that the chief medium through which this generation engages with these questions and symbols is not the church but popular culture. In true postmodern fashion, Beaudoin—a 29-year-old graduate of Harvard Divinity School—argues that theology is both something to talk about and something to be lived, and must therefore be understood within its cultural context. Since Generation X was defined in its infancy, more than any previous generation, by the "amniotic fluid" of popular culture and the leisurely use of technology, it is in these avenues of personal (and therefore spiritual) expression that Xer theology is to be found.
Beaudoin focuses his attention on music videos, clothing fashions, and cyberspace communities to explore four key themes: disregard for institutions, emphasis on experience, the religious dimension of suffering, and the importance of ambiguity to faith. The earlier chapters read like an apologetic for popular culture in general. Beaudoin is, in effect, asking theologians to come down from the ivory tower and enter the mosh pit of day-to-day life. The fluidity and inconstancy of popular culture may not bode well for those who encourage more rigid and systematic theological constructs, but the fact that religious words and symbols persist so strongly within that fluidity is all the more proof that popular culture is profoundly engaged in some sort of theological quest. That quest is often critical of religious norms, but then, so is much of Christianity.
In the later chapters, Beaudoin turns things around; having defended his generation, he now defends his religious tradition (namely, Christianity, particularly of the Catholic variety) and encourages Xers to root their doubts and critiques within such a tradition. Beaudoin finds his "GenX theological credo" in Mark 9:24: "I believe; help my unbelief!" Such ambiguity is central to faith, Beaudoin argues, and it is through it that Xers and religious communities can rediscover and learn from one another.
How one is to resolve the tension between reverence and irreverence is left a little vague, and some of Beaudoin's suggestions go a bit too far. For example, drawing a link between Madonna's "Like a Prayer" and the eroticism with which Bernard of Clairvaux and Teresa of Avila described their relationship with God, Beaudoin suggests that churches combine the music videos of one with the texts of the others, and thus help to bring about "the unabashed reintegration of sexuality and spirituality." No doubt some sort of reconciliation between sexuality and spirituality is needed in modern churches, but should someone as proudly promiscuous as Madonna be leading the way?
Nevertheless, Beaudoin drafts a generally compelling argument, and he draws on a wide, eclectic range of sources to make his point: Tori Amos, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joan Osborne, Thomas Merton, Pearl Jam, and Rabbi Burton Visotzky all jostle for space in the bibliography. Apart from the above concerns, the book is marred only by a weakness for puns (a discourse on navel piercing gets particuarly out of control) and a lack of attention to non-Christian elements in Xer culture (the band name Nirvana didn't exactly come from the Bible).
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