Beatnik Christianity Has Permanent Burnout with Christian Culture

Remember that scene in Office Space where Peter Gibbons first arrives at work? He sits down at his cubicle on Monday morning to that incessant, high-pitched repetition of, “Corporate accounts payable, Nina speaking. Just a moment.” That look of utter despair tells you everything. This is a broken man who hates his work life. Long-term stress has resulted in acute apathy, dissatisfaction, fatigue, and irritation. The cultural lexicon almost always associates burnout with professional life, but maybe that’s too limited. Could the same concept also apply to a person’s spiritual life?

To my mind, this idea of spiritual burnout helps explain a lot of what I see in the deconstruction crowd.1 Quite often it’s not that they’re disillusioned with Jesus or struggling with an existential question like the problem of pain. It’s all the stupid little shit that slowly adds up and destroys your soul. It’s Nina’s voice, Milton’s listening to the radio at a reasonable volume from 9-11:00, Lumbergh’s cover sheets on the TPS reports, the printer saying here’s a paper jam when there is no paper jam, the tacky Hawaiian shirt day on Friday, and the words, “Case of the Mondays.”

Evangelical culture’s version is every bit as bad. It’s the piety police, social façades, dress codes, guilt trips, culture wars, purity culture, selective judgmentalism, antiquated gender norms, gossiping “prayer warrior” church ladies, and ignorant “YouTube researcher” alpha males. It’s the campy t-shirts, bad music, and worse movies. It’s the endless regurgitation of the same bad talking points during Sunday School and the endless stream of factual inaccuracies flowing from the pulpit. It’s the Christianese lingo like saying, “Father-God” 73 times during a single prayer.

It’s not just evangelicalism, though. Every expression of Christian culture is like this. For example, in Mainline Protestantism it’s the layers of bureaucracy, the reader-response gibberish baptized in contemplative language, and the proud “bad boy” vibe for smoking cigars and drinking alcohol. It’s the knee-jerk misogyny comment upon hearing the word “Paul” and the same anti-patriarchy spiel every time someone uses traditionally gendered Trinitarian language. It’s the strident opposition to any form of evangelism and catchphrases like, “New ways of doing church.”2

The original beatniks had a reputation for leaning curmudgeon, but it seems to me this reflected a case of permanent burnout with American culture. Beatnik Christianity has the same condition only it’s directed at Christian culture. The latest example? An Episcopalian priest using ChatGPT to produce hokey lyrics in the style of a mid-’90s rap for Trinity Sunday.3 I love Jesus more than ever but, after 20 consecutive years of Christian culture burnout, have finally moved into a place of acceptance. This condition is permanent and I’m not trying to get over it anymore.4