What is hip?

Thanks to Jason's valuable support/meddling, I've discovered a cold mine of an example of forming an online Christian community (or fellowship). St. Pixels.

St. Pixels is a good model, because they do what every other online fellowship I've found does to enfranchise internet users. They espouse hipness, and put-down anything that would be conceived as traditional or "outdated." Perhaps, a strange attempt to shake off the image of
religiosity as a relic of an era when we just didn't know any better. To not treat the web with the respect that a young user might be pre-disposed (through a whole life time of using it as a resource) to treating it with, would seem to fuel the belief that the Christian community "just doesn't get it." By harnessing power of web 2.0 as a medium to such a degree that you endow it with powers once reserved for "sacred places" (praying online, online confessionals, etc), you show young users that have been brought up to trust the web with personal information, fact-finding, and general advice, that you do get it.

Part of St. Pixel's mission statement is: to create a sacred place. To make the internet sacred? This is an interesting extension of the accessibility that evangelical Christians have been developing since, well, the apostles. The idea that hyperspace can be considered sacred, seems revolutionary to me. I don't mean necessarily a revolution on the order of The Reformation, or The Great Awakenings, but to assign the internet the power of a church certainly frees up control of how one can participate on the level older media have leading to the aforementioned revolutions. Would the Reformation be possible without the printing press? The "mega church" without unprecedented ease in automotive travel?

Could online holy spaces change the way we view religious participation? Imagine staying home on a Sunday, with your family hunched around the computer watching an e-service. If the music was interrupting your football game, it could be guiltlessly muted. Say the sermon was boring, maybe you could only watch half. I'm not saying that this potential would destroy the traditions of a good service. I think some people will always need to dress up and worship in a traditional way, but now the community has been extended to include these possibilities. New ways to participate expand what community membership means. The process of being a practicing Christian is "globalized." The way that everybody who writes can, with debatable verisimilitude, now call themselves a writer if they keep a blog, any one who considers themselves a Christian can call themselves one, as long as they log on for an occasional chat.

Adapting a community to serve new ways of networking is essential, but is all the "hipification"? Should St. Pixels use goofy cartoon avatars, instead of, maybe more realistic ones. Is making the structure of RL services seem boring by assigning them traits like "cobwebs, and organ fund," really necessary?

I want to further explore the need for coolness that seems to be inescapable in e-vangelism. While there is nothing disrespectful about St. Pixel's attitude towards a traditional service, there is a subversive sensibility to what they are doing. There is an emphasis on the conflict that this subversion creates, that doesn't seem to be necessary for expansion, but is perhaps is part of a greater marketing strategy to make the organization seem like an alternative for those who "don't like church." What about the crotchety old traditionalist point that we lose certain things with this network, especially in such a deeply spiritual context. Is it fair to suggest that logging on is akin to attending a real service. I wonder what Islamic attitudes towards this kind of worship are/would be, and what this says about the two religions different ideas about community building.