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T-shirts that say "Jesus Is My Homeboy." Magazines that talk about body piercing on one page and "extreme prayer" on another. The Christian Tattoo Association. This is the next generation of Christianity, according to a recent story called "Christian Cool And the New Generation Gap" by John Leland (reprinted here), which ran on the front page of the New York Times Week in Review section. A "movement" Leland calls "alt-evangelicals" has "gained attention by creating alternative churches in coffee bars and warehouses and publishing new magazines and Bibles that come on as anything but church."

Credit Leland for not taking the familiar angle and reflexively lauding "alt-evangelicalism"'s innovation and edginess. He sounds skeptical by the fourth paragraph: "But does a T-shirt really serve the faith? And if religion is our link to the timeless, what does it mean that young Christians replace their parents' practices?" Leland then records theologian Michael Novak's suspicions that this is watered-down religion. The piece could have better distinguished between the two chief religious mistakes of the baby boomers which "alt-evangelicalism" presumably attempts to correct: on the one hand there is what Leland terms the "deity-free 'church lite'" of the megachurches; on the other is the overly sedate worship of mainline denominations. "My generation is discontent with dead religion," Cameron Strang, the 20-something founder of Relevant Media tells the Times. "Our generation wants a tangible experience of God who is there."

Leland says the significance of the "alt" movement is "more stylistic than doctrinal,"

and so he is generally content to convey a conflict between defenders of tradition and proponents of change. But a larger question is left out: whether it is in a megachurch, a mainline church, or a coffee shop church, can religion really become more meaningful if it fails to foster faith that is both communal and cosmic? That is: will religion that is vertical—an up-and-down connection to God—be only tweaked but never truly improved until it also becomes horizontal—enriching and informing our connection to other believers and to the natural and cultural world? Some of the "alt" Web sites and magazines still reek of the attempt to enhance the believer's "user experience," which isn't communal or cosmic. The Times quotes college students who told a survey they find religion "personally helpful" for "spiritual strength." But religion should go beyond that and foster faith that changes how we see the world and carries a call to heal it. A magazine-like teen Bible profiled in a Timessidebar—which promises "Beauty Secrets" on its cover (the inner kind, we can only hope)—seems to cater to, rather than challenge, its readers' worldview.

That teen-zine cover brings up one last point. The assumption holds throughout the Times piece that teens and young adults are so spiritually immature that the seed of faith won't take root unless it comes in cool packaging. Teenage girls are all Hilary Duff, give or take a layer of makeup, whose attention will waver unless you wave a Christian version of Cosmo before their eyes. For two striking counterexamples to this caricature, read the weblogs of the daughters of theologian Gideon Strauss (whose own blog is an essential bookmark). One discusses C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, and her love of poetry. The other reflects on her mandolin lessons and evaluates the ontology of Hinduism from a Christian perspective (she's 13 years old). Both come across as young disciples who take seriously the biblical charge to "be transformed by the renewing of your minds." Relevant Media may have a lot to learn before it is relevant to them.

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