The Bitters, who tend to gravitate toward Christian hipster culture, are on a mission to expose the “conservative conspiracy” wherever they can find it (or create it) under the guise of “healthy critique.” Bitters define themselves by what they are not

Is it me or does it seem that many kids reared in affluent conservative evangelical communities become bitter people in their 20s?

I’ve recently read blog posts and articles by 20-somethings reared in suburban evangelicalism that seem to be committed to doing one thing: attacking the very community that raised them and doing it bitterly. I call them “the Bitters.”

How the Bitters communicate fits Ronald Inglehart’s thesis from the early 1970s about post-materialist young people.

Inglehart wrote that when children grow up in abundance, like many suburban evangelical kids, they are more concerned as young adults with “self-expression” than they are hard work and survival—the concerns of those who grew up struggling with scarcity.

Adding to that, Bill Bishop, in The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, writes that children of abundance become post-materialist young adults who lose interest in organized religion and become increasingly focused on personal spirituality.

Economic growth and military security decline in political importance and are replaced by issues like personal freedom, abortion rights, social justice, and the environment. These young adults are less inclined to obey central authority and lose trust in hierarchical institutions.

Read More: http://online.worldmag.com/2011/01/26/evangelicalisms-bitter-20-somethings/