One of the more provocative theories Freud posited was his notion of the Oedipus Complex. According to Freud, at a critical juncture in childhood the child would experience sexual desire for the opposite sex parent and rivalry/aggression toward the same sex parent. The names for the Complex come from two Greek tragic figures, Oedipus and Electra, who unwittingly killed their same-sex parent and married their opposite-sex parent.

Given the power differentials between the child and the parents during the Oedipus Complex, the child finds themselves psychically and sexually thwarted and frustrated. That is, the sexual and aggressive drives cannot be expressed. According to Freud, the child resolves this dilemma by identifying with the same-sex parent. The boy becomes the father or the girl becomes the mother. For Freud, this process of identification is important for the formation of the superego. That is, the superego, the moral voice inside our heads, is the internalized parent.

What should we think about all this?

As best I can tell, modern scientific psychology has rejected any strong notion of the Oedipus Complex. However, if we approach the Oedipus Complex in the fuzzy manner I suggest (see Part 1) then some interesting things emerge.

First off, we all know that the relationships between parents and children can be volatile and ambiguous. And Oedipal dynamics do seem ubiquitous. When boys have intimate and idealized relationships with their mothers we call them a "mama's boy." Conversely, when girls have intimate and idealized relationships with their fathers we call them a "daddy's girl." Notice how these relationships fall along Oedipal lines. Further, conflict in the home is often hottest between the child and the same-sex parent. Sons fight with fathers and daughters fight with their mothers. Again, this is consistent with an Oedipal alignment. None of this is sinister or weird, but it does go to show that Freud wasn't pulling this stuff out of thin air.

Second, the resolution of the Oedipus Complex leads to the internalization of the parent's voice. I think most of us know what this is like. Messages and scripts from our childhood get into our heads to shape our identities and how we see the world. Often, these parental voices are toxic; we internalize the voice of the parent who told us we were fat, or stupid or worthless. Once that voice has been internalized it is very difficult to shake. The shadow of a parent (inside our heads) can be very, very long.

And, finally, let's talk theology.

Freud's basic claim is that our interactions with our parents shape our identity, relational style and conscience. Although most of us would reject the specifics of the Oedipus Complex I think we can see the larger point Freud was making. Child-parent dynamics are complex and formative.

This is important to recognize because God is primarily understood as being a parent, generally a father. Consequently, our experiences with our parents have implications for how we approach and experience God. Given that God is mostly seen as a Heavenly Father, our experiences with our fathers can be critical in determining the shape and style of our spiritual journey.

This impact is by no means predictable. For example, I know people who have been sexually abused by their fathers. Many of these people struggle with the notion of God as Father. The relational schema of father is toxic to them. Thus, any mention of God as Father in church, Scripture or worship just pushes them away.

By contrast, many people with abusive paternal relationships often find in God the loving Father they never had. For these people the metaphor of God as Father is deeply healing and comforting. In short, the effects of abusive or conflicted relationships with parents, fathers in particular, do not seem to have any predictable or uniform outcome. Regardless, the relationship with parents does have an impact upon how one experiences God.

What if the father-schema has been traumatically broken? Is it vital to the Christian faith that God must be understood as Father? Or is this metaphor dispensable? Might the father-metaphor be a product of a bible-times patriarchy that our more egalitarian era can correct?

No doubt, God is understood as Mother at times in the bible (e.g., Isaiah 49.15; 66.13). Consequently, this has prompted a demand for bibles that are gender-neutral or gender-inclusive. For example, rendering "God our Father" as "God our Father and Mother."

The parental metaphor imbalance is less acute in the Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions where the veneration of Mary as the Mother of God is integral to the Christian experience, in worship, prayer and devotion. Protestants, however, generally worship only with masculine metaphors. Recently, some Protestant writers and thinkers are beginning to explore Mariology, hoping, I think, to find a place for the feminine in Christian devotion. I think this impulse for redress is what sits behind a lot of the fascination with books like The Da Vinci Code.

Now, I'm not interested right now in getting into the political and social debates about feminist critiques of the bible and Christian parental metaphors. Nor am I interested right now in the place of Mary in Christian devotion. What I am interested in, in this post, is how our early experiences with parents impact how we experience God. And I wonder how those experiences might affect how we experience the paternal and maternal metaphors of God. That is, I wonder how old Oedipal issues might be driving things like the gender-inclusive language debate. And, finally, I wonder how, from a pastoral perspective, we are to approach a person whose father-schema is so poisoned that they practically vomit inside a Christian worship service.

We live in an culture, in America at least, that is both child-centric and nurture-obsessed. Interestingly, American Christianity has fully embraced these cultural emphases. American Christianity has made the parental nurture of children its defining witness to the world. This is a strange move to make given Jesus's consistent marginalization of family love. That is, Jesus doesn't place storge (love of family) at the center of his Kingdom vision. Rather, Jesus's focus is on what the Greeks called xenia (love of the stranger/outsider; hospitality). This downplaying of storge in favor of xenia is clearly illustrated in Jesus's teaching. Two examples:

Matthew 5:
"You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Luke 14:
Then Jesus said to his host, "When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

As we reflect on all this, we might ask: Given Jesus's clear and consistent teaching, how did Americans and American Christians come to place so much emphasis on family love?

Some of the answer has to do with Freud.

As noted above, American culture is child-centric. This is a unique cultural stance, historically and globally. Most cultures have tended to place adulthood at the center of culture, especially the elderly. Americans, by contrast, have inverted this widespread emphasis. The elderly in America tend to be marginalized and discounted. The elderly are not deferred to or respected the way they are in other cultures. Rather than respecting old age and wisdom, Americans idolize youthfulness and childhood. The children are our future. They are the prized possessions. Babies are our idols.

Freud was significant in this shift of focus (from Jesus's culture to our own) in that Freud was the first influential thinker to devote significant attention to the role of childhood upon adulthood functioning. Freud's detailed theory of the psychosexual stages of development was unprecedented. Further, Freud detailed the way family relationships between parents, siblings and children can affect development, for good or ill. For Freud, the secret to who I am today is to be found in the past, in the early experiences of family and childhood.

This idea--the child is the father to the man--is so widely held that we fail to note how revolutionary it was when Freud began placing family life under the microscope. True, prior to Freud many acknowledged the importance of childhood. But Freud's analysis and theory revealed just how much could get screwed up during those years. Suddenly, childhood became very, very fragile. Parents could really mess things up. Kids could get ruined very easily.

Overnight, parenthood became a minefield. One had to tread carefully. Kids won't spontaneously recover from bad parenting. Thus, great skill was required. The Better Parenting obsession and industry was born.

Into this mix a uniquely Christian spin was created: Perhaps, in this post-Freudian parenting milieu, Christians could distinguish themselves from "the world" by showing that they love their kids more than anyone else loves their kids. By loving their kids more, by being the best parents in America, Christians might become a witness to the world.

Now, this isn't intrinsically a bad notion. I think it's great that Christians try to be wonderful parents. I know I try. But I think there are some risks to this strategy.

First, it's lopsided. The mass effort to love our kids more and show the world that we are the best parents in America is routinely done at the expense of, well, loving the world. We've replaced xenia with storge. That is, by having Norman Rockwell family meals we often fail to invite the people on the street to our tables. Family life becomes an idol.

Second, by priding ourselves upon being the Best Parents in America we come off as holier-than-thou. That is, on purely pragmatic grounds, the goal of loving our families as a witness to the world just isn't working. We look selfish, self-interested and self-absorbed. Instead of washing the feet of the world we read parenting manuals and pride ourselves on reading bible stories to our kids at night. All good, but annoying to outsiders. We need to do more than this.

In short, Freud was integral in creating new modern emphases, concerns, and neuroses about family and childhood development. We've all, the church included, imbibed these cultural trends. Thus it is important to step back and ask again, "What is the truly counter-cultural move?" How do we, in this post-Freudian climate, embrace robust and healthy families while opening ourselves to lives of hospitality and service to others? How does xenia as well as storge come to typify Christian living?

Because Freud has affected us far more than we've realized.

Next Post: Potty

When my son Brenden was little we couldn't get him into reading. He was plenty smart enough but just couldn't get into a book. Jana and I both love to read so this development was distressing to us. So we tried all kinds of books.

Then, one day, Jana's aunt, an elementary school librarian, told us about a series of books that children Brenden's age just love. Now, she cautioned, these books were kind of inappropriate. She didn't carry them in her library, but from what colleagues had told her other schools couldn't keep these books on the shelf they were being checked out so fast.

The series was the Captain Underpants books published by Scholastic.

The Captain Underpants books are half comic book and half young chapter book. And they are filled with potty humor. Here are some of the titles currently in the series:

The Adventures of Captain Underpants (1997)

Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets (1999)

Captain Underpants and the Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants (2000)

The Captain Underpants Extra-Crunchy Book o' Fun (2001)

Captain Underpants and the Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman (2001)

The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby (2002)

Captain Underpants and the Preposterous Plight of the Purple Potty People (2006)

Just look at that list. Underpants. Potty People. Diaper Baby. Professor Poopypants. Talking Toilets. Wicked Wedgie Woman. And I don't even want to know what "Extra Crunchy" is referring to.

Anyway, looking at the books Jana and I demurred on buying them. We're too sophisticated for this kind of literature. And yet, as the months passed, our desperation to get Brenden to read his first book grew. So we cracked and bought him the first book, The Adventures of Captain Underpants.

Brenden sat down and read it straight through.

His first book. We were both pleased and depressed. Captain Underpants? Really? This was to be his first book?

Regardless, our son was reading.

So that night I found myself at the bookstore looking for the second book in the Captain Underpants series. And as I'm walking the rows of books I see a women scanning books as well. After a minute she stops me.

"Excuse me, but do you work here?"

"No," I reply. "But what are you looking for?"

"I'm looking for the Captain Underpants books."

My eyebrows go up. "Well, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Our son just read the first book and loved it. I'm looking for the second book in the series."

She laughs. "I'm looking for them because I'm an elementary school teacher in town. Our library carries the books but they are always checked out. So I'm going to buy some and keep them in my class so kids can read them during our silent reading time. My kids just love these books. It's what got many of them reading."

True story. And as I drove home that night from the bookstore I began to think about Freud and the Anal Stage of childhood development.

Why did Freud spend so much time thinking about the psychological effects of toilet training? Well, for one simple reason. Toilet training is the first time a child confronts the fact that society has claims on how we use our bodies. Prior to toilet training, the child, as we've discussed, is raw Id, a conscienceless gratification machine. Children, we've noted, are like animals. This is nowhere more clearly demonstrated than the fact that children are not expected to control their bowel movements or urination. They can pretty much poop and pee wherever they are. Much to the inconvenience of parents.

So it probably comes as quite a shock to the child when, apparently out of the blue, the parents start asking the child to control her bladder. The child must be thinking, "Seriously? You want me to hold it in!?"

Yes, yes we do. We want you to hold it in. And, yes, it's uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable at times. But your job is to hold it in and endure the discomfort until you can get to the bathroom. It's time to grow up. It's time to step away from the animal world and join the housebroken humans.

Society has claims upon my body. I can't do whatever I want with it. I can't hit you with it or expose it to you. I have to manage my body and endure physical discomfort at times. My body is not my own.

Interestingly, this is a very biblical idea. Take, for instance, Paul's comments regarding marriage in 1 Corinthians:

The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife's body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband's body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife.

Beyond marriage, I think you can also claim that, as Paul sees it, the bodies of the entire Christian community belong to each other. For Paul, the notion of the body is a communal notion. My body is not my own to do with as I please. As a Christian my physical body is community property. Which is a radical notion to Western ears. But it shouldn't be. Think of potty training.

In short, the realization that society has claims on our bodies is the beginning of our moral sense. That is, toilet training, learning to be a "good" boy or girl, is our first systematic moral education. The first lessons on how bodies and their impulses are to be mastered in light of social demands.

Consequently, the language of goodness and sinfulness is intimately tied up with the experience of potty training. To be good is to be "clean." Cleanliness is next to godliness. The color white is the color of holiness. Conversely, to be bad is to be "dirty," "filthy," or "unclean." The prodigal son finds himself with the pigs. We can make a "mess" of our lives, morally speaking. And the central ritual of Christian salvation is a bath.

And in the Captain Underpants books the evildoers are the "poopy people." Goodness, represented in the hero, is some clean white underwear, proudly worn.

In short, our most primitive metaphors concerning morality reach back to the very first experience we had when society first made claims upon our bodies. So it was then. So it is now.

Next Post: Oedipus

One of my dreams as a college professor is to create a class where students and professors take a bus ride through the South visiting important sites in the Civil Rights Movement. My ideas have gelled enough that I'd like to outline the experience and itinerary I have in mind so that I can point interested parties to this post. Plus, if you are driving through any of these cities you might want to visit some of these sites yourself. I hope to offer the class next summer or the one after.

The Historical Timeframe
The historical timeframe of the class would be the early Civil Rights movement from 1954 with Brown vs. Board of Education through the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most effective Civil Rights legislation signed during the Movement. About a 10 year span of history.

An Immersion Experience
By riding a bus I'd hope to capture a bit of the spirit of the original Freedom Riders and add other features to the class to create a kind of immersion experience for the students. For example:

The Course Soundtrack
Prior to departure the students would create a soundtrack of the music between '54 and '65. A particular focus would be on the music and anthems of the Movement. For example, see this compilation. The soundtrack should also include key speeches and sermons from the Movement. Again, these are readily available. Students should also sample the radio music of the time. For example, Billboard's 1955-1959 hits.

The goal of the soundtrack is that this music would be the only music the students would listen to during the bus tour. Students can make their own mix but some songs would be required. For example, they must have We Shall Overcome.

A Daily Newspaper
Prior to departure the professor or the students would prepare a "daily newspaper." The goal of the assignment would be to capture the headlines and stories from the actual newspapers that covered the various Civil Rights events. Period era newspaper coverage, of, let's say, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, would be copied and put into a newspaper. Or facsimile copes could be obtained. On the day the students wake up in a hotel in Montgomery the professor would slide the "daily paper" under their doors. The students could then read the actually news of the day as reported in Montgomery on a given date. For flavor, non-Civil Rights stories (e.g., sports) and period advertisements could be added.

The Black Church Experience
Given that this trip will be about 10-14 days long, Sunday worship should be at a historical black church, hopefully one that had a role in the Civil Rights movement. If possible, it would also be nice if we could partner with various black churches to house the students in homes as we passed through the town. During these visits the students could collect oral histories of people who participated in the Movement or who experienced Jim Crow segregation.

The Itinerary and Map
The tour would start in Abilene, TX and go to the following cities in this order (and the loop could be reversed):

Little Rock, AR
Memphis, TN
Nashville, TN
Greensboro, NC
Atlanta, GA
Birmingham, AL
Montgomery & Selma, AL

Google maps has this loop at 2,725 miles at 1 day and 19 hours of driving (which is why we need a soundtrack and audio sermons). The map of the whole trip can be seen here. I estimate the trip taking 10 to 14 days.

The reason for looping in this order is to place the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis at the start of the trip. This will provide the student with a big picture overview of the Civil Rights Movement at the very start of the trip. The end of the trip would be in Montgomery and Selma, the two historical bookends of the Movement (the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and the Selma Voting Rights March in 1965). Basically, this loop makes approaching Montgomery and Rosa Parks the spiritual pull of the trip, to make a pilgrimage to the place where "it all began." But one could also start with Rosa Parks and end up in Memphis at the Civil Rights Museum. However, given that Memphis is also where MLK was shot this would end the trip on a down note. Although historically backwards, I like the idea of a journey toward Montgomery.

Tourbooks
There are a couple of wonderful state-by-state, city-by-city, and site-by-site tourbooks of the Civil Rights Movement. Three I've consulted are:

Traveler's Guide to the Civil Rights Movement

On the Road to Freedom: A Guided Tour of the Civil Rights Trail

Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement

Key Movement Events and Sites
As we travel through the cities we'll focus on six important Movement events with their associated sites:

Brown vs. Board of Education and School Integration

Brown itself isn't a site we can visit. But Brown v. Board of Education was the critical event that gave the Movement both moral and legal leverage to challenge segregation in the South. Since Little Rock is the first city we would travel through we can talk about Brown right off and stop by Central High School where the first major test of Brown occurred. On September 4, 1957 the "Little Rock Nine" attempted to enter Central High to start school with the white children. They were stopped by a mob and Arkansas national guardsmen deployed by segregationist governor Orval Faubus. This was in direct defiance of federal law. Eventually, things in Little Rock got so out of hand President Eisenhower mobilized the 101st Airborne Division to force Central High to integrate and to protect the nine black schoolchildren.

Our time in Little Rock won't be long. Just a quick stop to look at Central High, which is relatively unchanged.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Under Jim Crow public spaces were segregated in the South. This included city buses. In Montgomery the front seats of the bus were reserved for whites and the back seats for blacks. Seating typically went from front to back for whites and from back to front for blacks, with the two groups meeting in the middle on a full bus. Depending upon the racial mixture of the passengers the middle seats of the bus were often "floating" seats under the control of the bus driver. Occasionally, these middle seats would fill up with black passengers. If this happened when a white person boarded the "floating" middle section would need to get readjusted. This meant that previously seated blacks would have to give up their seats to create an open row for the newly-boarded white passengers.

On March 25, 1955 Rosa Parks was asked to give up her seat. She refused and was arrested. That evening, black city and church leaders mobilized a campaign to boycott all city buses. The new preacher at the Dexter Avenue Church, the young Martin Luther King Jr., was elected to head up the boycott. The boycott lasted for over a year but was eventually successful. The boycott was the first successful mass and non-violent action in the Civil Rights Movement. The boycott made MLK a national figure.

Sites to see in Montgomery related to the boycott:

The Empire Theater Bus Stop: Where Rosa Parks boarded the bus. There is also a Historical Marker at the spot where Rosa Parks was arrested.

Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church: King's church in Montgomery

Dexter Avenue Baptist Church Parsonage/King House: King's home. The Parsonage was bombed during the boycott on the evening of January 30, 1956.

The Freedom Riders

After the Montgomery Bus Boycott the next important Civil Rights actions were not initiated by Martin Luther King, the NAACP or their partners. After Montgomery the most influential actions--the Freedom Rides and the Sit-Ins--were initiated by college students. The Freedom Rides began with college students who set out to test compliance with interstate bus integration in the wake of the Boynton v. Virginia judgment, the Supreme Court ruling that integrated interstate bus transportation (in the bus and at the bus station). During the era of Jim Crow, segregation laws varied from state to state. For example, if I boarded a Greyhound bus in New York with my black friend I had to move to a separate seat at the state line of a segregated state. If we continued to sit together as we drove through the Jim Crow state we could be arrested for breaking the state segregation law.

In May of 1961 two Freedom Rides, one on a Greyhound and one on a Trailways bus, set out from Washington DC for a drive through the South. The rides went well until they entered Alabama. The Greyhound bus was attacked in Anniston, Alabama. As the bus fled the town a mob chased it in cars and trucks. Due to having its tires slashed in Anniston the bus had to stop a few miles outside of town. A fire bomb was thrown onto the bus and the doors were held shut to prevent those inside from escaping. When those inside finally did emerge they were attacked and beaten. The bus was left as a smoldering shell. Freedom riders were also attacked in Birmingham and in Montgomery with many activists beaten with pipes and chains. After the attacks the Freedom Rides were continued and completed under federal escort.

To reflect on the Freedom Rides of 1961 we'll visit:

The Greyhound Bus Station, Montgomery

The Trailways Bus Station Site, Birmingham

The Student Sit-In Movement

On February 1, 1960 four black college students sat down for service at the segregated Woolworth's diner counter in Greensboro, NC. Thus began the student sit-in movement.

The heart of the sit-in movement was in Nashville, TN were college students, after receiving training in non-violent tactics from James Lawson (who studied non-violent technique in India), began to systematically target segregated downtown Nashville establishments. Many of these sit-in protests led to violence, abuse and retaliatory bombings.

Sit-In sites to visit:

F.W. Woolworth Building, Greensboro, NC: The site of the first sit-in.

Walgreen's, Nashville, TN: Site of one of the largest Nashville sit-in confrontations.The

Birmingham Protests

Birmingham was perhaps the most dramatic Civil Rights confrontation. Martin Luther King Jr. was pitted against racist police chief Eugene "Bull" Connor. At the start of the campaign King's early mass marches attracted few marchers. Consequently, King and his colleagues made the very risky and controversial choice of using Birmingham schoolchildren in the marches. The tactic worked, from a public relations stance, when Connor unleashed his fire hoses and police dogs on the children. All of which was captured on TV. The resultant images, fed into American living rooms, brought the shocking images of Jim Crow brutality into public consciousness. King was arrested and jailed during the Birmingham campaign leading him to pen his famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Local sentiment decisively broke against Jim Crow on September 15, 1963 when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on a Sunday morning and killed four young girls.

Sites to visit in Birmingham:

Kelly Ingram Park: Site of the fire hoses and the dogs.

Birmingham Civil Rights Institute

City Jail: Where the Letter from a Birmingham Jail was written.

Sixteenth Street Baptist Church: Location of Klan bombing that killed four girls on a Sunday morning.

Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery March

The Selma to Montgomery marches are considered to be the emotional peak of the Civil Rights movement. The marches were planned to protest voter disfranchisement. The protesters planned to walk 54 miles from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery to make their case before the Alabama state government. On March 7, 1965, a day known as "Bloody Sunday", marchers began to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. Waiting for them on the other side of the bridge were state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. When the groups met the marchers were brutally beaten back. The marchers eventually retreated, leaving a blood soaked bridge behind them.

Martin Luther King led a symbolic prayer march to the bridge two days later on March 9. But fearing another attack King didn't cross the bridge. Eventually, the march resumed on March 21 and lasted five days when the marchers reached the state capital in Montgomery. Today the route in a National Historic Trial. Five months after the march Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, considered to be the most influential civil rights legislation passed during the Movement.

Sites to see in Selma:

Edmund Pettus Bridge: Site of Bloody Sunday.

Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail

Additional Sites

National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis, TN

Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA: King's church after he left Montgomery

Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (also where King is buried)

So that's the sketch of the trip. I'd love to get any help or feedback. Have you been to any of these sites? Feedback about them? Any other sites along this route or in these cities that we should check out? Recommendations for textbooks? Assignments?

If we ever make this class a reality at ACU I'll let you know.

Beyond positing a distinction between the conscious and the unconscious, Freud also described various psychic structures that he believed interacted with each other, mainly unconsciously. These structures were called the Id, Ego, and Superego.

The Id is the primary psychic structure and, thus, the most primitive (i.e., animalistic). The Id operates according the the pleasure principle, seeking somatic pleasure, release and gratification. In short, Freud posits a hedonic view of motivation. Similarly, many Christians describe temptation in largely hedonic terms. For example, hedonics are implicated in the very first sin:

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

Also note the hedonic formulation from 1 John:

For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.

According to Freud, the Id, as the primary and original psychic structure, dominates a child's motivational psychology. That is, a child only knows gratification or frustration (i.e., thwarted gratification). Consequently, Freud had a low view of childhood. Children are basically selfish and pleasure-seeking. A child's behavior is primarily regulated by the external environment through rewards and punishments. That is, the child has yet to develop a conscience. Thus, following up on Part 2 in this series, children are similar to animals in that they have yet to internalize a "knowledge of good and evil" and become neurotic. Like animals, children don't mind nudity or urinating in public. One has to remind children to put some clothes on or to close the door to the bathroom.

From a theological vantage all this looks very Augustinian and Calvinistic, a modern spin on original sin and human depravity. And I think that connection is valid.

Digging deeper, if gratification is the goal of the Id then we need to specify the exact nature of the "pleasure" being sought. Freud specified the motives of the Id by positing two drives toward gratification: Sex and aggression. Freud believed that sex and aggression were the two principle motives of human psychology.

That seems like a pretty grand claim. So I like to pause at this point and ask my students the following questions: What do you think about sex and aggression between the two fundamental impulses of human motivation? Specifically, ask yourself, how much of TV or movies or entertainment can be explained by an appeal to sex and aggression?

Take, for example, going to a Dallas Cowboys football game here in Texas. What interests us about this game? Well, there is a lot of aggression:


And there is also a lot of sex:


Now, you might counter that sex and aggression better describe male Sunday NFL psychology. But an examination of media and entertainment that targets females is also full of sex and aggression. The conflict and sex might be different in manifestation and nuance, but it's still there.

In short, Dr. Freud wasn't crazy in highlighting sex and aggression. Sex and aggression are everywhere. For example, sex and aggression are implicated at the very beginning of the Biblical story. As noted in the last post, the first symptom of the Fall of Adam and Eve was the onset of sexual self-awareness ("they realized they were naked"). The very next sin is murder, when Cain kills Abel. Sex and aggression, the first two marks of the Fall. Plus, how much sex and aggression is in the Bible overall? A lot.

Of course it would be ridiculous to reduce all of human psychology to sex and aggression. Even if we appeal to the sublimated manifestations of sex and aggression: Love and work. But I think Freud should get some credit for boldly making the claim that, despite civilized appearances, sex and aggression infuse workaday existence. And if our media and entertainments are diagnostic of what catches our fancy, attention or interest, well, Dr. Freud seems to be spot on.

Next: Nurture

Imagine yourself as an alien visitor doing an inventory of the creatures of earth. I line up three beings--a dog, a duck and a human--for your inspection. What, do you expect, would be the first thing that would jump out and grab the attention of an alien comparing these three animals?

Answer: One of them is wearing pants.

Clothing is so ubiquitous we often fail to notice how odd this behavior is, ethologically speaking. True, clothing norms have varied widely across space and time. Many tribes and cultures have gone virtually naked. But even so, most of these tribes haven't gone totally naked. Generally speaking, humans like to wear pants.

Why? Well, the Bible tells us. Clothing is, interestingly, the very first behavioral symptom of the Fall of Humankind. It's not murder. That comes later. No, the first symptom of the Fall is putting on some pants:

"You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Let's note three interesting things about the Dawn of Pants. Specifically, these three events are intimately connected:

1. The Knowledge of Good and Evil
2. The Onset of Shame
3. The Dawn of Pants

What is the meaning of these connections? Well, as noted above, let's take the onset of clothing as the beginning of the separation between Man and Animal. Clothing is the beginning of civilization. To this day we consider nakedness to be a regression to an animal-like existence.

If so, then the rise of civilization was intimately related to the onset of our moral sense, the "knowledge of good and evil." And morality creates shame. And shame leads to pants.

What does all this have to do with Freud?

Well, if Freud was anything he was the great expositor of the neurosis of modern man. Specifically, Freud's claim was that Man is, at root, a neurotic animal. And he didn't mean this in a bad way. Neurosis is the salvation of Man. Neurosis is what makes us human. Neurosis is what creates society and community. Neurosis is what creates civilization. Neurosis creates Man.

Animals don't wear pants (this blog is genius, isn't it?). Why? Animals are not neurotic. I've never seen my dog worry about having a bad hair day, pooping in public, or worrying about if God forgives him. In the language of the Bible, dogs don't feel shame. At least not neurotic shame.

This is simply another way of saying that dogs lack morality. The difference between animals and humans is that humans have internalized a "knowledge of good and evil," the imperatives of oughts, should's, and have-to's. The world of Ten Commandments, expectations, norms, values and mores. The notions of heaven and hell, the saved and the damned.

It is true that this internalized moral code can be a burden. Freud knew this. But it is a burden that must be carried. We can't live without shame and guilt. To lose our neurotic anxiety--"What will people think of me?"--is to let go of being human. To revert back to an amoral animal existence. To stop wearing pants.

I know we might envy our pets and their moral oblivion. Dogs don't commit suicide or worry about hell. But we couldn't live as they do. We don't want people having sex in public or urinating in the streets. We want and need some things to take place behind closed doors. We need to say to each other: "For the love of God, put some pants on!"

But, again, it is a double-edged sword. Shame, guilt, feeling a failure. Feeling damned. Those are feelings that poison the mind.

So human existence is about walking this razor edge. Between being too moral or not moral enough. Between guilt and sociopathy.

The best way forward seems to be the advice of Qoheleh, the writer of Ecclesiastes

Do not be too righteous, and do not act too wise; why should you destroy yourself? Do not be too wicked, and do not be a fool; why should you die before your time? It is good that you should take hold of the one, without letting go of the other.

Do not be too righteous. Do not be too wicked. Walk the neurotic edge.

And for the love of God, put some pants on.

Next Post: Id

Every semester for the past few years I've lectured on Sigmund Freud in my class PSYC 493 History of Theories in Psychology. It's a Senior level class and by the time the students reach it they are throughly down on Dr. Freud. Given that my colleagues are Christian and come at psychology from a cognitive-behavioral slant this outcome isn't surprising. In class after class Freud functions as a punching bag.

I'm sympathetic to this attitude about Freud. But I feel that it is my duty in PSYC 493 to give Freud his most charitable reading. And I'd like to take a few posts to share some of those perspectives, presenting how I see and appreciate Freud.

I start by telling the students about my metaphor for approaching Freud. Specifically, Freud is like an autostereogram:



Unpacking the metaphor, I think Freud was largely off on the details. Like an autostereogram, if you read Freud in a fine-grained way you can't see much. But if you step back from Freud, gaze through him and kind of allow yourself to grow cross-eyed, well, some new vision of things just might pop out at you. Read in crisp detail I don't think Freud has much to offer. But a fuzzy Freud, where only the broad, bold gestures of his theory are noted, is a remarkably insightful thinker.

In this post let's start with Freud's master stroke, the existence of the unconscious.

Most are familiar with Freud's basic notion that the majority of psychic existence takes place outside of awareness. We call this the iceberg metaphor. That is, the mind is like an iceberg. The conscious mind peeks out above the waters but gives no indication about the vast mass below the surface, the unconscious. Our conscious mental life is only, as they say, the "tip of the iceberg."

What is the practical import of the iceberg model of the mind? Well, basically this: You don't know who you are.

Recall the famous dictum of Socrates: Know thyself. Freud is in complete agreement with this sentiment. The goal of psychoanalysis is, at root, insight. Or, as Freud said, to "make the unconscious conscious." In short, Freud stands in the grand Greek tradition of self-awareness, self-investigation, and self-knowledge.

But Freud adds a twist to the Socratic dictum. He makes it harder. Basically, Freud's model of the unconscious implies that insight is very, very difficult.

Freud's claim is that our experience of the self is, at root, one of befuddlement. We just can't figure ourselves out. If you've ever looked in the mirror and said "What is wrong with me?" then you get Freud's basic point.

This experience of befuddlement is nicely illustrated by Paul in Romans 7 who ends the chapter with the lament "Wretched man that I am!"

If insight and self-knowledge are hard to obtain what is a person to do? Well, Freud's answer was that we need some outside assistance. For Freud this assistance was provided by the psychoanalyst. But, again, I'd like to fuzz Freud up a bit on this point. I don't think an analyst is (always) necessary. I think the important point Freud makes is the notion that insight requires community. You can't figure yourself out by thinking really, really hard. You need someone to give you some concrete feedback about your behavior.

For example, let's ask these questions: Is Richard Beck a good husband? Father? Friend? Co-worker? Well, if we follow Freud we know that the last person who can give a good answer to these questions is me. I can't see myself clearly. So if you, or I, want to know if I'm a good father you'll need to ask (or I'll need to ask) my family. They are better situated to answer that question. In short, if I want to "know myself" I need to start having conversations with the people in my life. Introspection only goes so deep. It's like staring into a mud puddle.

I think all this has important implications for spiritual formation. Freud's thought highlights the need for community in the pursuit of self-awareness and self-understanding.

"Know thyself" is about conversation rather than introspection.

Next Post: Pants

There has been a great deal of talk lately among the radio and TV punditry about "socialism" in America. In religious circles this conversation tends to take on moral overtones. It is claimed that capitalism rewards work and punishes laziness. By contrast, socialism, it is believed, enables laziness and vice.

Take the issue of taxes. A "capitalist" claims that taxes are unfair. Why tax people who work hard and make money? Why "redistribute wealth" by giving money to the idle and lazy? According to the "capitalist", taxes are unfair and immoral. By contrast, the "socialist" claims that success in life isn't solely the product of hard work. Lots of luck is involved. Not everyone gets into law school or medical school. Not everyone is born with good looks, talent or a high IQ. Not everyone gets born into good families and school districts. And not everyone can be at the top. There is only one Google or Microsoft. Hard working competitors are just out of luck if they come in second place. To succeed you must, by definition, succeed at someone else's expense. Thus, it is only fair and moral that you share the fruits of your success with the people you climbed over.

Work versus Luck. This is issue is often at the root of the debate over taxation or government interventions to level the playing field. Both ideologies make good points. No doubt hard work is implicated in success. But so is luck. Consequently, how one views the taxation debate is largely the product of how one views the causal forces behind success.

Into this debate steps the book Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. I love Gladwell's work and would recommend his two others books--The Tipping Point and Blink--along with Outliers.

Outliers is a book about success. And what impresses me about the book is that, chapter by chapter, it portrays the interplay between work and luck in the creation of success.

Let me give some examples. First, let's look at work. Chapters 2, 8, and 9 of Outliers are odes to work. For example, Chapter 2 is about the 10,000 Hour Rule, the notion that true expertise in a given area can only be attained after one has put in 10,000 hours of practice. Take Tiger Woods as an example. Clearly he's talented. But the story of Tiger Woods is largely about his childhood. You can't explain Tiger Woods without talking about his father and Tiger's commitment to practice as a child and adolescent. Point to any other "genius" (e.g., Mozart, Bobby Fisher, The Beatles) and you'll find, behind the talent, 10,000 hours of practice. In short, success involves hard work. Drudgery. Commitment. Sweat.

Chapter 8 picks up on that same theme. In Chapter 8 Gladwell tackles the puzzle of Asian excellence in math. Are Asians genetically superior to Americans and Europeans in the area of mathematics? Rather than pointing to genetics to explain the standardized test score gap between Asians and Whites Gladwell tells a story of work. It is largely a cultural story, a tale of the work ethic of the rice patties. To understand this story one needs to understand the agriculture of rice patties. Basically, rice is very difficult to grow, requiring hour-by-hour year round vigilance and sweat. Which is very different from Western agriculture (plant the corn, pray for rain, and take the winters off). The cultural rice-farming legacy is captured by an Asian proverb, "No one who can rise before dawn three hundred sixty days a year fails to make his family rich." Rice farming is about year round, hour-by-hour work.

Gladwell's argument is that success at math is largely a matter of work. Math is hard. And it takes persistence and sweat. Asians, shaped by the cultural ethic of the rice patty, simply work harder than American school kids on mathematical subjects. When American school children encounter difficult math problems they quickly give up. Asian children tend to work the problem and work the problem. Just like you work a rice patty. In short, Asians are "better" at math than American school children because Asians work harder. It's not genetic. It's work.

This lesson finds an American application in Chapter 9 when Gladwell takes up the successes of the KIPP Academy in New York City. KIPP is a middle school that produces outstanding students from inner city populations. The key to KIPP's success is simple: Work harder. The KIPP kids start school earlier, end later, and have shorter summer vacations. KIPP kids are swamped with homework. They work late into the night and get up early for the earlier start time to the school day. And the outcome? Success. The lesson for American education couldn't be clearer. Want better standardized test scores? Want to compete educationally with other nations? Work harder. Longer school days. More homework. No summer vacations. It's simple. Work harder.

In short, Outliers preaches the value of work. And this seems to support the no tax ideology. Success goes to those who work.

But Outliers is not so simple. Outliers pushes against the myth of hard work by devoting chapters to the role of luck in success. Take, for example, Chapter 1. The story of Chapter 1 centers on the ages of professional hockey players. In the 1980s Canadian psychologist Roger Barnsley noted a curious phenomenon while looking through the program at a professional hockey game. Specifically, Barnsley observed that most of the hockey players on both teams were born in the months of January, February, or March. Now why would hockey player birthdays cluster in these three months? Well, the answer has to do with the cutoff dates in the Canadian youth hockey system (an American example would be Little League baseball). The age cutoff in Canadian youth hockey is January 1. So imagine two kids born two days apart. One is born on January 2, just missing promotion, and is, thus, the oldest and likely biggest kid in his league. The other is born on December 31. This kid is promoted up to the higher league as the youngest, and likely smallest, kid in the advanced league. A two day difference in birthday makes you the smallest or the biggest kid in your league.

Now talent isn't correlated with age. You can be the youngest and the best or the oldest and the worst. But being older is an advantage in pre-adolescent sports. Being older means that, on average, you are bigger, stronger and faster. This translates into more ice time (or more innings). And, remembering the 10,000 Hour Rule, the clock starts ticking. That small advantage begins to grow over the years as the slightly older kids get more game time and opportunities for All Star or touring seasons (highly competitive off-season practice and games). A small, initial lucky advantage rapidly inflates to create a real disparity of skill on the ice. Work is involved, but it's also a matter of luck. Just look at the birthdays of professional hockey players.

In short, work and luck are intimately intertwined. Those professional hockey players are talented. Genetics is a part of it. And they also have practiced and worked really hard. Work is also a part of it. But they also had the perfect birthday to give them a slight edge over their peers. Luck was a part of it.

Given that talent is also a matter of luck (think of that sibling who is better looking, more athletic or smarter than you) we simply cannot discount the role of luck in success. This is not to discount the role of work. Far from it. Success does involve work. But small turns of fate, like a birthday, can have huge implications. The successful should be praised and emulated. They have worked hard. But they did not earn their genes. And they have also been lucky. The successful cannot claim all the credit.

The reason I'm interested in the role of luck is that I hear a lot of religious people railing against the rise of "socialism" in America. But I think it is very clear, the case in Outliers as one example, that personality, work ethic, religious affiliation and income are impacted by luck. Consequently, all I am and all I own isn't solely due to my virtue or work ethic. I'm not good, I'm fortunate. Importantly, luck implies success at someone else's expense. I got the break and you didn't. You're a janitor and I'm a millionaire professional athlete (or CEO, Dr., or whatever). Consequently, it seems right and just that I share.

How much should I share? I don't know. Where is the balance here? How much luck is involved? How much work? When are the taxes too low or too high? Again, I don't know. All I'm arguing is that the socialistic move isn't, on the face of it, immoral or unfair. It's realistic as far as I can tell. I don't mind debates about taxes or entitlements. But I do mind an ideological stance that automatically and unthinkingly equates taxation or "socialism" as evil. Why? Because it assumes life is all merit, work and virtue with no luck involved.

Mother of the Year: Jana Beck

(Thanks to Gayle for sending this. Surf to the link for a fun way to celebrate your Mother.)

Some articles that George, Pecs and David have sent me. I haven't had time to blog about them yet, but each article is fascinating and I wanted to share them. Enjoy! Thanks, gentlemen, for all the research help.

The Various Species of Scaremongers.

The Links Between Mental Illness and Creativity.

Three related articles (here here and here) on a Darwinian View of art.

Using brain science to modify or remove memories to deal with trauma.

Children of atheists defecting to faith.

Atheists coming out of the closet.

The holier-than-thou effect.

Ah, the simple joys of working on a college campus.

It is finals week here at ACU. Yesterday, we had a visitor in our library while students were busy studying. Exam Man came to visit.

Apparently, a student dressed in only underwear, a mask and a cape ran through our library as "Exam Man" throwing out scantron forms (those forms you bubble in on multiple choices tests) with A's on them. The scene was captured here:



I have a student who has an inside contact at the ACU Police Department. She forwarded me the official police report entry:

Yesterday evening at 21:09 hours a call was received from Dr. Berryhill the on duty librarian at the ACU Library who stated that a college age white male had just entered the Library exclaiming he was the "Exam Man" he ran through scattering scantron cards. When asked for a description she stated he was only wearing a Super Hero type mask that covered his whole head, it was white with blue and silver stripes, and he had on a pair of white jockey shorts. After scattering the cards he left. Some other witnesses stated he may have also had a cape of some type.

Have a wonderful weekend! And Exam Man, I feel safer knowing you are out there...

Some of you might be uncomfortable with the notion of a hip or cool Christianity. The source of the discomfort may be the close association between hip/cool and consumerism. "Hip" and "cool" are simply labels to get us to buy stuff. Macs are cool and hip; PCs are not. So we buy Macs. Hip is something we purchase. Buy the right stuff and you are hip.

This is certainly a legitimate concern and complaint. In Chapter 13 of Hip: The History Leland discusses the relationship between hip and consumerism. He posits two theories about hip and consumptive culture. The first model, the one I've been working with, is that hip is out ahead of culture. Consumptive culture is always chasing hip but never catches it. Because when hip gets "caught" it is no longer hip. It is true that hip is an engine of cultural change, but hip can never be the dominant fashion or trend. Current fashions and trends are hip fossils.

But the trouble is, Leland notes, the consumptive culture is moving so fast it is hard to see how hip can legitimately stay out in front. Further, there is the whole phenomenon of "selling out." In the artistic trades (music, writing, film, etc.) a person sells out when they give up their artistic standards, which might be hard on a mass-market audience, to become "popular" and make some money.

The difficulty here is that it can be, at times, awfully hard to tell when an artist is selling out. Again, the culture moves so fast that something hip, an isolated cult phenomenon, can explode overnight into a popular phenomenon. Especially in the age of Facebook and YouTube.

But it is even worse than that. Let's take, as a case study, one of the most famous incidents in rock history: The day Dylan plugged in.

In 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival Bob Dylan shocked his folk following by plugging in, moving from acoustic to electric guitar. Dylan was met with a chorus of boos and jeers from the audience. As a consequence, Dylan cut short his set and walked off stage. The claim in the wake of the Festival was that Dylan was selling out. Moving out of the cultish folk scene and trying to appeal to a broader radio audience.

The question I'd like to consider is this: Was Dylan really selling out? Who gets to say?

The point being that it can be very hard to disentangle hip from popular appeal and the engine of capitalism. Things are moving so fast and artistic choices so subjective (an electric versus acoustic Dylan) that one suspects that no real distinction exists between hip and the whims of culture.

This leads to the second model regarding the relationship between hip and consumerism. In the first model, the one I've been working with, hip is an engine of consumerism but is separate from it. Consumptive culture is parasitic upon hip, it mimics hip. But the second model is that there is no substantive difference between hip and consumerism. Maybe there was in the beat and bebop generations, but not today (for the reasons noted above).

Stating this thesis baldly, consumptive culture now sells rebellion. And when we all fancy ourselves as rebels no one is a rebel. Leland points us to a wonderful 1995 essay by Thomas Frank entitled "Why Johnny Can't Dissent" on just this topic. Here is a bit of Frank's analysis:

Consumerism is no longer about "conformity" but about "difference." Advertising teaches us not in the ways of puritanical self-denial (a bizarre notion on the face of it), but in orgiastic, never-ending self-fulfillment. It counsels not rigid adherence to the tastes of the herd but vigilant and constantly updated individualism. We consume not to fit in, but to prove, on the surface at least, that we are rock `n' roll rebels, each one of us as rule-breaking and hierarchy-defying as our heroes of the 60s, who now pitch cars, shoes, and beer. This imperative of endless difference is today the genius at the heart of American capitalism, an eternal fleeing from "sameness" that satiates our thirst for the New with such achievements of civilization as the infinite brands of identical cola, the myriad colors and irrepressible variety of the cigarette rack at 7-Eleven.

As existential rebellion has become a more or less official style of Information Age capitalism, so has the countercultural notion of a static, repressive Establishment grown hopelessly obsolete...

The problem with cultural dissent in America isn't that it's been co-opted, absorbed, or ripped-off. Of course it's been all of these things. But it has proven so hopelessly susceptible to such assaults for the same reason it has become so harmless in the first place, so toothless even before Mr. Geffen's boys discover it angsting away in some bar in Lawrence, Kansas: It is no longer any different from the official culture it's supposed to be subverting...

The people who staff the Combine aren't like Nurse Ratched. They aren't Frank Burns, they aren't the Church Lady, they aren't Dean Wormer from Animal House, they aren't those repressed old folks in the commercials who want to ban Tropicana Fruit Twisters. They're hipper than you can ever hope to be because hip is their official ideology, and they're always going to be there at the poetry reading to encourage your "rebellion" with a hearty "right on, man!" before you even know they're in the auditorium. You can't outrun them, or even stay ahead of them for very long: it's their racetrack, and that's them waiting at the finish line to congratulate you on how outrageous your new style is, on how you shocked those stuffy prudes out in the heartland.

Frank's point is well taken. Think, again, of the PC versus Mac commercials. Hipness is what we are being sold.

All this complicity between hip and mass-market consumerism makes us wonder if the question "Can Christianity be hip?" can be answered in the affirmative. If there is no difference anymore between hip and selling out then a hip Christianity seems to be a non-starter.

And we know this. We've seen how Christianity, or what passes for Christianity, is often co-opted by consumptive culture. The Christian junk industry is alive and well. And health and wealth preachers are best-selling authors with packed out mega-churches.

But all this looks so similar to the story of hip that I can't help but wonder if there is an alliance between Christianity and hip. Both Christianity and hip struggle, and often fail, to keep distance from the marketplace. Both resist selling out. Often it is hard to tell the difference. But a real struggle seems to be going on. Something pure is pushing back against simplification and pollution. Like the church, hip is trying to say on a narrow and a lonely road.

The point is that a hip Christianity is always going to be struggling against selling out. And it is going to be an ongoing process of discernment to determine if one's soul has been lost. It's a razor edge and people will disagree. Again, an electric Dylan comes to mind. New forms might be hip or sell outs. And it will be hard to tell the difference, initially at least. But that's not bad, just a call for awareness and self-criticism.

So hip Christians beware! It's hard to be a rebel in a mall full of rebels. It's hard to be a church that doesn't sell out. It's hard to embrace the PC in a world full of Macs. Or a Miller High Life in a world full of micro-brews. Or Maxwell House in a world full of Starbucks. Beware. And seek the truly hip.

I was teaching our Sunday School class this week.  I always write my notes for the class in a Moleskin notebook I carry with me (with all my blog, lecture and research ideas inside).  After class many friends reminded me that Moleskin notebooks recently appeared on the list of Stuff White People Like.

Ouch.

I know most of you know of Stuff White People Like.  But if you don't, it's an Internet sensation with a new book coming out.  So it's worth mentioning the site given our discussions of hip.

Recall from Part 1 that the origin of hip is the interface of black and white culture.  Thus, the list "stuff white people like" is a list of squareness, of the non-hip.  That is the engine of the site's gimmick.  That there is something kind of forced, odd, uncool, weird, needy or nerdy about white culture.

Interestingly, not everything on the list is unhip.  There are some hip things on the list.  The issue, given the spirit of the last post, is that hip becomes unhip when whites fetishize aspects of black culture.  That is, when whites try too hard to embrace the accouterments of hip they come off as "trying too hard."  The embrace comes off as inauthentic and needy at best or an act of co-option or theft at worst.  See the entries on Bob Marley and on hip hop references for reflections on this subject.

The point is, Stuff White People Like seems to support the notion that hip is a balance between white and black culture.  Hip can't be too white or too black.  But it begins with the minority group.  (To use missional church language, hip is going to come from the stranger.)  Thus, being in the majority position whites tend to struggle more with hip as once the phenomenon goes mainstream (goes "white") then the hipness starts to wane.  

For the full list of Stuff White People Like.  Enjoy.  

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body...

--Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass (1855)

In Hip: The History John Leland calls Whitman's preface to Leaves of Grass an early and founding manifesto of hip. Whitman's preface illustrates an important feature in hip, the interplay of high and low culture.

As Leland tells the story, the seminal ideas of hip were articulated by people like Whitman, Thoreau, Twain and Melville. In each case we see a world-class mind engage with common folk and common life. Hip is very intellectual but it is not found in ivory towers. Hip is the intellectual on the street corner. As Whitman says, hipsters "go freely with powerful uneducated persons."

Leland highlights this impulse--the mingling of high and low culture--in the "golden age" of hip. Specifically, Leland contends that hip reached its zenith with the bebop musicians and the beat writers. Both bebop and beat were uncompromisingly intellectual. The innovations of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk were not easily digestible to those accustomed to the easy melodies of swing. To get bebop, then as now, one had to understand what was going on, intellectually speaking. But bebop wasn't intended to be an academic experience. It was the product of a gritty urban existence. It was the musical equivalent of Whitman's poetry.

In a similar way, beat writers such as Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac brought intellectual, poetic, philosophical and artistic commentary into gritty and forlorn places. The settings of beat writing were common, dirty, psychiatric or workaday. But the observer inside those experiences was a genius. That fusion of art and gritty reality--the jazz musician in the smoky club, the beat writer on the road--is the essence of hip.

Hip Christianity, therefore, will also be a fusion of high and low culture. Of artistic or philosophical sensibilities in the middle of the grim of life. That mixture of enlightened trashiness is the vibe of hip. And, as you might expect, Christianity is ideally suited to be hip in just this way. From its beginning Christianity has been unabashedly intellectual while finding its life among the common folk and in the gutters. In a sense, the Incarnation is the hippest event in the history of the world. The quintessence of hip is someone of Jesus' intellectual and artistic caliber hanging out with prostitutes and rough working class people. In the words of Whitman, Jesus "stood up for the stupid and crazy." In short, Christians known that Jesus is more likely to be encountered in a bar than in a pew.

So hip Christianity revels in the mix of high and low, enlightened and profane. Hip Christians like to have church in bars and coffee shops. Hip Christians like to connect high theology with low cultural texts such as song lyrics, movies, TV shows, and comic books. Hip theology is done among the people using the texts of popular culture.

The trouble is, this "hip theology" and "hip Christian engagement" can be overdone and forced. Often the juxtaposition of high and low can appear forced and strained. A preacher doing a sermon series on U2 to capture the attention of his younger audience might fail miserably. If you look like you are trying to be hip then, well, you aren't hip.

So how can you judge when the fusion of high and low is really hip versus a little lame and square? I have two thoughts.

First, recall that hip is always moving, trying to escape and stay out in front of the mainstream culture. What is hip today won't be hip tomorrow. Hip has to stay in the minority to remain hip. Consequently, the key to a hip sermon, book or blog post is being early. Remember, hip is a form of enlightenment. To be early is to know, to be surfing the ever-moving wave of hip. To be late to the tide of low-culture hipness is to demonstrate that you are attempting to be hip. That is, you didn't notice the hip trend until it had become mainstream. You can't do a hip sermon once the phenomenon has passed the tipping point. That doesn't mean the sermon is bad, just that it isn't hip.

Second, the fusion of high and low culture, to be hip, has to be artistic. It needs to be well-done, as a form of art. Not every philosophical or theological analysis of a pop-cultural text is hip. The analysis could be dry, ham-handed or boring. But if the fusion of high and low creates something fresh, novel and surprising then we call it hip. The high-level analysis makes us appreciate the pop-cultural text even more.

To conclude, hip Christianity follows the path of Jesus and the founding personages of hip. Hip is found with scoundrels on the Mississippi, on the banks of Walden pond, on the streets of Brooklyn and in speakeasys and psychiatric wards.

These are the locations of both hip and Christianity.