Reflecting on the hairstyles on display in the photographs accompanying Mary Travers’s obituary, Diane Winston notes the evangelical appropriation of the goatee:

Pastor_Rick_Warren_CropFlash forward 40 years, and now everyone wants that artistic, intellectual, beat image. No longer linked to left-wing politicos and godless Communists, the goatee is a popular look for businessmen, ballplayers and evangelicals of all persuasions. They’re positively de riguer for youth ministers, and Rick Warren has made his facial hair, along with colorful Hawaiian shirts, the trademark of a hipper, friendlier “new evangelicalism.”

Historically, evangelicals have had a genius for appropriating popular culture to spread the good news. They pioneered mass communications before secular institutions did, experimenting with hot type, film, radio and television in each medium’s early days. Likewise, they’ve made use of popular forms of entertainment—from 19th century Chautauqua lectures to the 21st century XXX Church—in an effort to reach the masses.

But don’t confuse style with substance. Saddleback Church and others helmed by conservative hipsters remain mainstays of old-time religion and its conservative social, political and theological claims. Rick Warren, T.D. Jakes and Bob Coy may all wear goatees, but the answers they hear blowing in the wind are not the same ones that inspired Mary Travers.

Read her full post here.