Making Jesus look good

Nadia Bolz-Weber is infinitely cooler than I am. She is probably cooler than you, too, unless you happen to be Bono. As readers are reminded a few too many times in Pastrix Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran, is the tattoo-covered founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints (HFASS) in Denver, an emerging congregation populated largely by people who are also much cooler than your typical Century reader.

When faced with such unrelenting coolness, I have a tendency to get a bit defensive. My bruised ego tries to convince me that this must be yet another case of all style and no substance. Surely Pastrix debuted at number 17 on the New York Times best-seller list not because Bolz-Weber is actually saying anything new, but as a result of the extraordinary hype surrounding her “precious little indie boutique of a church.”

Yet the attention is well deserved. For all her swagger, Bolz-Weber is a surprisingly vulnerable narrator who pairs personal confessions with beautifully articulated statements of faith. And though she really isn’t saying anything new, she’s telling old truths in the best possible way. She communicates the gospel with more f-bombs than your average person of the cloth, but the crux of her message is the cross of Christ.