Peter, Paul and Mary were an early '60s sensation—affixing  the nascent counterculture's political edge to mainstream American folk music. Several years before the Beatles ballyhooed a "Revolution," the Greenwich Village trio saw what was blowing in the wind—subsequently performing at civil rights marches and other progressive causes.

Also akin to but predating the Beatles, the group understood the power of hair. Travers wore hers long and straight, telegraphing loose and youthful sexuality. Peter and Paul had goatees—a look that echoed Lenin, Trotsky and "Negro" jazz musicians. Oh, and Maynard G. Krebs—Dobie Gillis' ne'er-do-well  beatnik buddy.

"On television the group's mildly bohemian look—Ms Travers favored beatnik clothing and Mr. Yarrow and Mr. Stookey had mustaches and goatees—gave mainstream audience their first glance of a subculture that had previously been ridiculed on shows like 'The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.'" writes the Times.

"You cannot overemphasize those beards," said Mr. Wald [Elijah Wald, a popular music historian]. "They looked like Greenwich Village to the rest of America, They were the first to go mainstream with an artistic, intellectual, beat image."

Flash 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.

Diane Winston