2 minute read
The term “beat” had a layered meaning for the Beat Generation. For Jack Kerouac it referenced underworld slang and meant feeling beat down and downtrodden. The beat movement also had deep influence from jazz music, so others tied it to that genre’s creativity, unconventionality, and improvisation with musical beat. Others joked that they marched to the beat of a different drummer. Allen Ginsberg felt the movement had a spiritual undercurrent that tied into the biblical beatitudes. Beatnik Christianity consciously leans into all of these layered meanings.
It’s nearly impossible to understate the importance of the beatitudes in understanding and living The Way of Jesus. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then the beatitudes are the heart that pumps the blood that sustains and nourishes everything. The beatitudes in Matthew 5 call us to a countercultural lifestyle of grace, humility, compassion, mercy, peace, and forgiveness even in the face of poverty, brokenness, injustice, disorientation, slander, and persecution. This is the evocative Kingdom vision that prophetically undercuts the ethics and expectations of this world.
Much of Christian culture these days presents worship as a form of magic. By giving money, singing praises, proclaiming God’s glory, and doing good deeds we placate His righteous wrath and earn His gracious favor, thereby experiencing blessing. It is God’s intention for us to live this “abundant life” chalked full of health and wealth. Yes, there are the blatant expressions of this prosperity gospel like Joel Osteen peddles at the country’s largest church weekly self-help seminar, but more subtle forms have insidiously filtered in many of our churches… *facepalm*
Johnny Cash wore black to identify with the broken and downtrodden. In the lyrics from “Man in Black,” he wrote, “I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, but is there because he’s a victim of the times.” That’s the stuff of the beatniks, the beatitudes, and The Way of Jesus. Personally, I feel beaten down by Christian culture’s oppressive optimism, obnoxious triumphalism, and prosperity gospel nonsense. That’s the #1 reason I’m a Beatnik Christian.
The original beatniks were often perceived by the church establishment as the walking antithesis of a Christian lifestyle, but they loved the beatitudes. I think that’s significant. It speaks to a spiritual consciousness about human flourishing, the meaning of life, and the way we interact with God, other people, and the natural world. But more than anything, it points to a primal discontent with society’s expectations and values that inspired a creative revolution of what was possible. That is the countercultural zeitgeist I’m trying to capture in Beatnik Christianity.
