As many of you have gathered, we are on a vacation of sorts this week, with the “of sorts” meaning we’re visiting the family of the one I wed, and we’re still working but we’re basically doing half-days, which is a little rude but also we can’t take five weeks of PTO when our job lacks the resources to fund the P. Also, the in-laws are later sleepers than we (not everyone in this country grew up with Midwestern parents who A- were raised running a farm and B- were raised by a parent who believed it a waste of God’s time to sleep past eight), so by the time we finish work everyone’s wrapping up breakfast themselves and getting ready to eat lunch.
Anyway, I’ve snuck out in the morning a couple times to blog at this coffee shop down the road, and I’m still trying to figure it out. It’s in a new-build, warehouse-y space, and it’s clean and bright, with light-toned wood and a concrete floor and everything else crisp black and white. The baristas don’t have tattoos, and they have traditional quantities and locations of piercings, and their hair is not dyed, which is all striking after years of working in coffee shops in Austin. Basically, this feels like one of those Christian coffee shops you sometimes get in Evangelical-heavy areas of the country, like my hometown and the county seat in western Indiana where my buddy works at a steel mill. I just don’t know if it’s Christian.
To be clear, I like me a good Christian coffee shop. No hate towards Christian coffee shops. I go to church, I’m down with Jesus, there are certain bents of Evangelical Christianity which concern me but not every bent concerns me/a lot of Evangelical Christians are aggressively nice, which I wouldn’t condemn. I’ve been known to be aggressively nice from time to time. (I’m a little folksier with my nice-ness, though. Old lady Lyft passenger asking about my origins? I’m just a kid from northern Illinois trying to get a Christmas ornament business off the ground. Got a wife and a dog. Dog’s name? Fargo. No, no, after the city, actually. Just a good, sweet town. Like the movie too, of course. Yes, *laughs*, lot of cussing in that one. No ma’am, no children. Saving up for those. That’s why I’m driving Lyft. Yes, Austin’s a good place to live. Yes, *laughs again*, pretty pricey, but I suppose a lot of folks want to live here. Oh yes, very, very safe. Your granddaughter’s wedding will be beautiful. This is the best Courtyard Marriott in Texas! Oh, thanks! But I don’t have a cold. This is just how my voice sounds.) Would I prefer a Christian coffee shop over a secular one? No, vice versa, but that’s just personal preference.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure this place isn’t Christian, because 1) the baristas don’t feel like Chick-fil-A drive-through mediators, 2) the music is secular pop, and 3) when I look at the walls there isn’t a bible verse to be found. But it *feels* Christian, so I think what’s happening is this:
Once you get outside the major population centers in the sub-Appalachian South, everything clean and not plantation-vibed feels a little bit like an Evangelical church. Which makes me think what’s really happening is that Evangelical churches feel like the clean, non-plantation parts of the sub-Appalachian South.
