Australian eJournal of Theology 8 (October 2006)
Consumerism, Character and the Witness of the Church
David F. White
Abstract: The Christian church has been inhibited in presenting itself a witness of the
nature and purposes of God by its inattention to the formative forces of consumerism.
Protestant reformers articulated a doctrine of vocation that encouraged members to
“participate fully” in the systems of producing and buying, however, recent changes in
the workings of capitalism make such bargains seem naïve. In addition to the blatant
exploitation of raw resources and labor, and degradation of the environment,
overheated consumer capitalism is now distorting the sensibilities of those who
participate in its rhythms. If the church has imagined that it could avoid complex issues
such as economics or politics, this essay illustrates the impossibility of keeping these
forces separate from its witness. The constructive proposal of this essay includes the
importance of local churches becoming learning communities.
Key Words: consumerism; capitalism; church as witness; character formation;
exploitation; Commodity Form; marketing; economic ethics
hroughout history, Christian theology has cast a vision of the church as a witness or
sacrament of Christ, providing a tangible glimpse of God’s nature and purposes for a
broken world. This vision expresses the hope that the church’s life can be organized
according to values not only different from the world, but capable of evoking the beauty of
God. Beauty denotes not only an aesthetic ideal in which all parts contribute meaningfully
to the whole, but, for theologian Karl Barth, beauty constitutes the sine qua non of God. A
church consistent with such beauty reveals integration at all levels—spiritual, personal,
interpersonal, social, physical, economic and political. In other words, the values we
express in worship should also be revealed in our working and spending. Yet, the hope to
constitute a credible witness of Christ has been limited by our inability to engage in
serious consideration of whether our consumer habits are consistent with or divergent
from the hopes expressed in scripture and through our worship. Most churches avoid the
subject due to, fear of threatening the livelihood of members, belief in the goodness of the
current economic structures, or simply the unwillingness to engage such complex issues.
The question of consumerism does not yield simple answers. On one hand,
following the tragedy of 9/11, U.S. political leaders urged citizens to “go out and shop,” as
a way of signaling that terrorists had not weakened our financial strength and “our way of
life,” while serious theologians1 argue that globalization, which requires a high level of
consumption, to be the economic arrangement most beneficial to the poor, since buying
stimulates the economy, encourages investment, and creates jobs and wealth. Yet, other
Christians maintain that consumerism has a great many results in contradiction to
See, for example, Max L. Stackhouse, “Protestantism and the Problem of Poverty,” Insights: The Faculty
Journal of Austin Seminary 121: 2 (2006): 15. In this recent essay is a summary of his appreciative arguments
for global capitalism in God and Globalization and Public Theology and Political Economy.
1
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Christian faith and practice. Indeed, the nature of consumerism-- whether it is necessary,
helpful, benign, inevitable, unsustainable, or contradictory to Christian faith, may be the
single most important question for the contemporary church if we are to be the public
witness of the beauty of God.
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ON CONSUMERISM
A brief survey of Christian thought concerning consumerism will provide a context for
more critical and constructive proposals. In Jewish custom the created world is good and
human beings have the right to order it to their needs and enjoyment. They were
appreciative for the fertility of the land, for long life, and for plentiful offspring—provided
they did not increase wealth in ways that hurt others and that they took responsibility for
those who lacked basic necessities. However, Jesus relativized the quest for material
goods, and urged us to seek first the basileia, the Kingdom of God, setting aside family
relationships and responsibilities for the sake of God’s Kingdom. We are assured that
when we seek this first, God will take care of our material needs. The medieval period
found some asserting a profound incongruity between seeking the Kingdom of God and
seeking wealth—giving rise to various strains of monasticism and asceticism. Yet, the
Reformation opposed the monastic movement, asserting that the Christian calling is to
serve God in the midst of all the ambiguities of life, including family and business. Their
principle was full participation in the processes through which money is made and then
complete generosity in its use. As late as the eighteenth century, John Wesley taught that
we should “earn all we can, save all we can, and give all we can.” 2 Wesley’s instructions to
Methodists were very explicit; yet, many were more diligent about earning and saving
than about giving. Before his death, Wesley mourned the loss of the truly evangelical
spirit occasioned by the accumulation of property.
An enormous change occurred in the eighteenth century with the rise of
industrialization. Prior to the industrial revolution, individual production was relatively
fixed, and to be greedy was to desire to get more at the expense of another, but now
people discovered that total production could be greatly increased by using fossil fuels to
replace human labor and by having each person perform limited repetitive operations.
This worked best in a market where each person sought to acquire as much as possible for
as little labor as possible. This was understood to be "rational self interest"—and was
virtually indistinguishable from what had previously been called "greed." In general, the
pursuit of self-interest turned out to enlarge the total wealth and hence the availability of
goods and services to people. The change of classification from greed to rational selfinterest, combined with the highly positive assessment of its overall effects, has confused
Christian thinkers from that time on.
Some Christians, seeking greater consistency in the church’s moral teachings, have
reacted against the whole capitalist system—finding affinity, at least in theory, with
various forms of socialism. They argue that any arrangement which inherently encourages
individual greed and competition cannot be affirmed as consistent with Christian faith. On
the whole, socialism has turned out to be less efficient than when business decisions are
shaped by competition in the market. In short, it seems that most of the real gains from
nationalization can be achieved by government regulations that uphold the safety and
health of workers, insure that they are taken care of when they are unemployed and when
Thomas Jackson (ed.),“Sermon 50: The Use of Money,” The Sermons of John Wesley (1872 Edition) (Grand
Rapids: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 1999).
2
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they retire, and allow them to organize to promote their own interests. The welfare state
has garnered much of the support of those Christians who find sympathy with socialism.
The result of these developments has been that today most American Christians
support something very much like the status quo. They want government to provide a
modest safety net that does not discourage work and to regulate business in an
evenhanded way for the sake of safety and the environment and to prevent discrimination
based on race or gender, as well as monopoly control. They want businessmen to be
honest and to act according to the law. And they want those who do well to share their
prosperity with the church and various charities. And, until relatively recently, American
Christians have agreed that we should be satisfied with a modest level of consumption and
resist advertising that tempts us to want more.3 Today, many in the Christian church
support conspicuous consumption and recognize no contradictions with Christian faith.
While some Christians have long perceived the shadows of capitalism—for example,
the exploitation of labor and natural resources, profiteering, materialism, unequal
distribution of wealth--they have assumed that the overall results have been positive.
However, the contradictions of newer forms of consumer capitalism have intensified to
proportions that threaten the stability of life on this planet—and the integrity and beauty
of the church. The bargains made by Wesley and other reformers with the ambiguities of
the market now seem naïve. Despite the efficiency of consumer capitalism, including the
consequential rise of income among some of the world’s poor, its internal tensions are
seen most vividly in emerging concerns about the sustainability of overheated economic
growth, which intensifies exploitation of natural resources and produces prodigious
amounts of waste faster than ecosystems can be restored, and whether the global export
of consumer capitalism will, in the long run, benefit the poor as much as it obviously does
the wealthy. Moreover, a third concern involves the habits of character required by
individuals participating as consumers. However, since environmental degradation and
poverty are, at least intermittently, a part of public discourse, this essay will focus on
consumerism’s influences upon character.
CONSUMERISM’S INFLUENCE UPON CHARACTER
A church seeking to resolve contradictions that prevent it from embodying God’s beauty
should be aware of the ways in which consumerism forms the sensibilities and habits of its
participants. Despite the potential for traditions such as Christianity, ethnic traditions, or
family heritage, to establish alternative habits that resist the most ruthless values of
consumerism, finally, we must all work, purchase products, educate our children, and
engage in leisure activities. Americans who do not have capital to launch their own
business are left with few other options than working for corporations that remain viable
by competing with other corporations in extracting resources, promoting products
through advertising, reducing costs connected with making its waste products clean—and
significantly, by keeping labor costs low, and workers silent, fearful and competitive.
When advertising is ubiquitous, schooling is biased toward creating a work force instead
of educating a citizenry, and popular entertainment involves numbing passivity, it is no
wonder that the habits of consumerism subvert alternate values of community,
compassion, intelligence, responsible action—or love of God and neighbor. Our
sensibilities are formed in contexts that allow alternate values only as they do not
For a more complete history of Christian thought see John Cobb and Herman Daly, For the Common
Good (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).
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threaten the smooth operation of commerce. While most of us insist that we remain
autonomous from the influence of competition and advertising, nevertheless we
frequently mourn the decline in moral strength “in other people” or their children.
Despite what our economy does for people, our economy also does terrible things to
people, even to those who succeed. It makes them into people that they shouldn’t and
don’t want to be, and it encourages them to do things that they shouldn’t and don’t want to
do.
ABSTRACTION
Among other things, commodities appeal to our desire for convenience. However, Richard
Gaillardetz argues that what we gain in convenience, we lose in the form of other goods
internal to practices. Gaillardetz elaborates Albert Borgman’s analysis that distinguishes
between “technological devices” and “focal practices,” which commodities usually replace.
For example, he argues that the convenience of technological devices, such as, for example,
central heating and automatic dish washing, effectively abstract or remove us from
practices that, while more difficult, engage us in knowledge about the world and our own
growing capacities for knowing ourselves and others. For example, heating by wood
involves knowing something about the surrounding land—for example, which wood
burned best, how to chop wood and efficiently light a wood burning fireplace, which often
became a locus for social gatherings. Similarly, preparing food and cleaning after meals
were an opportunity for families to share stories, songs, and to instill values. According to
Gaillardetz, focal practices such as these bear important internal goods apart from their
utility.
Technological devices often relegate us to passive roles and ignorance about our
world, leaving our creative skills under-developed, and the Holy unacknowledged. When
we rely on technological devices to remove the friction from our lives, we also avoid
deeper appreciation of the world around us, our co-workers and partners, and the
possibility that God can be found in our experiences and reflections in the midst of these
relationships. He states, “I suggest that what we need today is a new “mystagogy” in which
humankind is guided to a more profound recognition of the presence of God as Holy
Mystery emerging from the warp and woof of our daily lives…the very commonness of
everyday things.”4 He argues against a view of God as a set of distinct experiences set
alongside the profane or “godless” experiences of daily life. This notion of God as distant
from the exigencies of life reinforces the view of daily living as boring, insignificant and
burdensome. Since objects, relationships or experiences are habitually reduced to their
commercial value, thus flattening their mystery, God is banished to church or religious
experiences narrowly defined. When we reduce life to easily consumable experiences, we
avoid the grace that comes when we are confronted by life’s alterity. Gaillardetz is not
advocating an unreflective nostalgia, that we adopt more primitive conditions, but he is
encouraging discernment concerning which life practices engage us or distract us from
our family, earth, self and God. Apart from such discernment, consumption of especially
technological devices risks forming our character in particular ways--as distant,
disconnected, ignorant, apathetic and unresponsive to life’s blessings and wounds.
Richard Gaillardetz, Transforming Our Days: Spirituality, Community and Liturgy in a Technological
Culture ( New York: Crossroad, 2000), 64.
4
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EROSION OF TRUST
In addition to creating distance from other people, technological devices enforce
additional layers of alienation. Barry Schwartz, in The Costs of Living: How Market
Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life, argues that consumer economy involves a
systematic loss of trust in other people—particularly those merchants with whom we
increasingly rely upon for nearly every material necessity. The enormous diversity and
complexity of consumer goods, whether electronic equipment, automobiles or tooth paste,
have multiplied our choices exponentially in recent decades, making it difficult for
consumers to grasp differences. In addition to the number of choices, the complexity of
new commodities, prompted by new technology and intensified competition between
producers seeking advantages to distinguish their products, makes it increasingly difficult
for consumers to be informed about the full range of consumer goods. Even a few years
ago, a person with rudimentary knowledge could understand the workings of an
automobile or telephone. But today, the equivalent of an advanced degree is required to
understand the technological subtleties of computers, cell phones, digital televisions,
automobiles and food production and preservation.
The impossibility of informing ourselves about the full range of products gives an
advantage to those selling goods and tempts them to exploit this advantage against
consumers. Caveat emptor—let the buyer beware—has always been the rule of the
marketplace. This rule may once have been adequate, but nowadays, being wary mostly
succeeds in making life a nightmare—and each transaction a contest between us and the
sales force. It leaves us feeling all the time that we’ve probably been taken. While some
argue that we don’t need trust--that competition will drive dishonest merchants from the
market, for no one will buy from them—still people need to know enough about
commodities to know if they’re being cheated. Now more than ever before, people must
rely on trust instead of economizing on it. And now, perhaps more than ever before, such
trust is unwarranted. Drawing on over 15 years of research by sociologist Paul Blumberg 5
documenting deceptions and abuses in the market place, Schwartz states,
The chances are pretty good that in the course of this ordinary day (an average person)
has been cheated or exploited about a dozen times. The chances are pretty good that he
had work done on his car that wasn’t necessary, that the meat in his sandwich was long
past its prime, that the premium scotch he asked for was actually a cheap substitute,
that the “fresh” fish was frozen, that the “fresh vegetables were days old, that there
were actually 96 pills in the 100 pill prescription he paid for, that the sale prices that
were hand written on the tickets in the department store were actually the original
retail prices while the prices printed on the tickets were 20 percent higher than the
store had ever charged, that the French fries on his plate were the ones that remained
after assorted servers had taken samples from his order, and that perhaps, the burger
that accompanied the French fries had been dropped on the filthy kitchen floor, only to
be returned to the grill to be “cleaned up.”6
Schwartz argues that “The pursuit and exploitation of individual advantage in the service
of profit is built into the ideology of the market. Those who fail to capitalize on their
advantages will earn less money, or be fired by their bosses, or be driven out of business
by their competitors.”7 Schwartz argues that even professions, once virtuously committed
5
Paul Blumberg, The Predatory Society (New York: Oxford Press, 1989).
Barry Schwartz, The Costs of Living: How Market Freedom Erodes the Best Things in Life ( Philadelphia: Xlibris,
2001), 31.
6
7
Schwartz, The Costs of Living, 41.
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to service--medicine, law, and politics--often exploit their credentials against clients for
profit. As a result, cynicism has become a strong undercurrent in our society—forcing the
conclusion that “everyone is out for themselves.” While, resignation to such exploitation
may be the price for such an economic system that is productive and efficient, we cannot
ignore how it forms our suspicious responses toward other people.
Although economists debate the necessity of trust (we don’t need it if we are well
informed consumers), Christian faith requires of us a “hermeneutic of generosity” toward
others—especially strangers. In his book, Company of Strangers,8 Parker Palmer suggests
that in the Biblical tradition, the stranger often reveals a word from God. Even as
strangers spoke a word to Abram and Sarai concerning their blessed destiny, we too are
instructed to view other people as bearing a message that opens us to God, neighbors and
our best selves. Palmer argues that we all harbor some broken or “strange” parts within
ourselves that cannot be revealed without opening ourselves to welcome the often
difficult or contrary word from the stranger. When we open ourselves to others in
generosity we open ourselves to the hidden wholeness that we seek. The mistrust
habituated in us by our movement in this consumer culture potentially forms us in ways
contrary to our deepest Christian hope to love God and neighbor.
INVIDIOUS COMPARISON
For millions of Americans, what they acquire and own is intimately bound with their
personal identity. They perceive their possessions as making meaningful statements
about the kind of people they are--their values, tastes, status, and generally the quality of
their character. This does not necessarily mean that we are a nation of crass statusseekers or base materialists. We are instead, a very insecure nation of individuals who
look to those around us to confirm our status and worth. Many of us are continually
comparing our own lifestyle and possessions to those of a select group of people we
respect and want to be like, people whose sense of what’s important in life seems close to
our own. Juliet B. Schor, author of The Overspent American,9 says that while competitive
acquisition has long been an American institution, in recent decades the culture of
spending has intensified. She states,
In the old days, our neighbors set the standard for what we had to have. They may
have earned a little more, or a little less, but their incomes and ours were in the same
ballpark…Today the neighbors are no longer the focus of comparison. How could they be?
We may not even know them, much less which restaurants they patronize, where they
vacation, and how much they spent for their living room couch…The comparisons we
make are no longer restricted to those in our own general earnings category or even to
those one rung above us on the ladder. Today a person is more likely to be making
comparisons with a reference group whose incomes are three, four, or five times his or her
own. The result is that millions of us have become participants in national culture of
upscale spending. I call it the new consumerism.10
In addition to friends and co-workers, we now compare our lifestyles to our media
“Friends” (This is true both figuratively and literally—the television show Friends is a
Parker Palmer, The Company of Strangers: Christians & the Renewal of America's Public Life (New York:
Crossroad, 1983).
8
Juliet Schor, The Overspent American: The Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer (New York: Basic
Books, 1998).
9
10
Schor, The Overspent American, 4.
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good example of an influential media referent). The impact of this wider reference group
may not be immediately apparent. As such reference groups form, they are less likely to
comprise people who all earn approximately the same amount of money—and therein lies
the problem. Schor observes, “When twenty-somethings can’t afford much more than a
utilitarian studio but think they should have a New York apartment to match the ones they
see on Friends, they are setting unattainable goals for themselves, with dissatisfaction as a
predictable result.” Solutions to this dissatisfaction include, consuming on credit as if you
had a big bank balance, unethical use of company expense accounts, shoplifting, or other
less than honest responses. Apparently the upscale life style is now so worth living that
deception, cheating, and theft are a small price to pay for it. Of course, all of this is
intensified by accelerated pace of product innovation. The new consumerism is built on
relentless ratcheting up of standards. What we want grows into what we need at a
dizzying pace. According to Schor,
Oddly, it doesn’t seem as if we’re spending wastefully, or even lavishly. Rather, many of
us feel we’re just making it, barely able to stay even. But what’s remarkable is that this
feeling is not restricted to families of limited income. It’s a generalized feeling, one that
exists at all levels. Twenty-seven percent of al households making more than $100,000
a year say they cannot afford to buy everything they really need. Nearly 20 percent say
they “spend nearly all their income on the basic necessities of life.” In the $50,000100,000 range, 39 percent and one third feel this way, respectively. Overall, half the
population of the richest country in the world say they cannot afford everything they
really need. And it’s not just the poorer half.11
She concludes that in America, “spending becomes you,” it flatters, enhances, and defines
people in often wonderful ways, but also sometimes takes over their lives. The need to
spend whatever it takes to keep current within a chosen reference group, even though it
may include those beyond several multiples of your income, drives much purchasing
behavior. One result of this new consumerism is that nearly 40% of all baby boomers now
have less than $10,000 saved for retirement and 60% have so little financial reserve that
they can only sustain their lifestyles for about a month if they lose their jobs. The next
richest 20% can hold out for three and a half months.12
This overspending also has a boomerang effect on public spending—for education,
social services, public safety, recreation and art. The deterioration of public spending has
only added to the pressure to spend more—as public schools deteriorate, families send
children to expensive private schools, buy security systems, and spend time at malls
instead of parks. These financial pressures have also reduced ability or will to support
programs for the poor.
While economists emphasize domestic growth or GDP as a sign of our national
health, alternate indicators that measure such quality of life issues such as, pollution,
parental time with children, the strength of the nation’s social fabric and public safety,
indicate that, since 1973, the social health of the nation has declined dramatically and
remains at record lows, despite the celebration of product growth and consumer
spending.
Theologian John Hoffmeyer observes that, “Constantly tiring of one enjoyment and
shopping for the next one, (consumers) lose the capacity to attend gratefully to that which
is given, right now, in the present…the turnover from one consumer enjoyment must be
quick. As a result, the characteristic temporal focus of consumer society is the proximate
11
Schor, The Overspent American, 6.
12
Schor, The Overspent American, 20.
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future: not genuinely now, but soon. Meaning and purpose lie just a little distance away.
They are not here yet, but they will be here once we go shopping. Unfortunately, that
promise proves illusory. The new and shining pleasure come quickly becomes tiresome,
and consumers are off again in search of the next enjoyment glimmering on the near
horizon.”13 The proximate future of consumer societies is an invitation to a treadmill
existence, in which the promise on the horizon always recedes just as the consumer thinks
that she has it in her grasp. As a result this proximate future is a continual distraction
from attentive gratitude in the present and a continual obstruction to the transformative
action that arises from attentive gratitude. Hoffmeyer suggests that a Christian approach
to time also interweaves past, present and future. But, unlike consumerist time that
collapses the present into anticipation of an envisioned future and self, but which always
recedes from our grasp, Christian sense of time embraces a past in which God created and
redeemed creation, a present lived in gratitude for God’s gifts and a future that is a
fulfilment of what has done in the past. In Christian faith, God’s promised future is not a
distraction from the present, but emphasizes the incarnation of God in present time, and
the preciousness of our embodied lives to God.
OBJECTIFICATION
The preeminent values of this economic system are marketability and consumption.
These two values are the ethical lenses through which we become conditioned to perceive
our worth and importance, and the worth and importance of others. These are the
foundational motifs of what John Francis Cavanaugh calls, the Commodity Form. 14 A
commodity is created when all value is wrenched from an object, relationship or person,
save the value of its marketability. When commercial value is projected as “real” value,
intrinsic goods, such as enjoyment, delight, beauty or mystery are suppressed. When a
forest is removed to make space for a shopping mall, it has become a commodity,
reducible to its sheer financial worth: When a college student organizes his curriculum to
become attractive to future employers, without acknowledging his gifts, passions,
religious commitments or view of the common good, he has become a commodity, reduced
to his financial worth.
Commodities are marketed to be easily “consumable”—not threatening,
inconvenient or mysterious—and this is true of much commercial entertainment that
relies on sex and violence for its immediate appeal to consumers. As especially young
consumers of commercial entertainment are socialized, with the help of peer groups, to
become sexual objects or spectacles of power, other values are suppressed. Consumer
society reveals us to ourselves as things for use by someone else—whether employers, the
military, marketers, or sexual partners. While families and churches often wage
significant resistance to these forces, the success of consumer capitalism has served to
make commodity formation an increasingly ubiquitous ethic, difficult to escape.
Commodity formation becomes a world view. Cavanaugh states,
In the family where love must be earned, competed for, won, or proved; in education
where value is exclusively rated in terms of production, quantified in grades, and
competitive standings; in religion with communion counts and Madison avenue
John Hoffmeyer, Trinitarian Theology in the Face of Consumerism (unpublished essay, 2000) in anticipation
of forthcoming book on the same subject.
14 John Francis Cavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society: The Spirituality of Cultural
Resistance (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1981).
13
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vocational promotions; in the job sweepstakes or in retirement of the expendable; in all
these areas, marketability is king…Will it play in Peoria?..Will I sell? Will they buy me?
…If you are unproductive you are worthless. 15
Cavanaugh contrasts the Commodity Form with the Personal Form, a way which he
perceives to be revealed most fully in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Cavanaugh states,
When I speak of the “Personal Form” I am referring to a mode of perceiving and valuing
men and women as irreplaceable persons whose fundamental identities are fulfilled in
covenantal relationships—a mutual commitment of self-donation between free beings
capable of self conscious reflection and self possession.16
He suggests that the gospel presents a model of humanity which is wholeheartedly
personalistic, liberating, and ultimately exalting of human life. In the Personal Form
revealed in Jesus, as well as various philosophers throughout history, the world and its
creatures exists not as objects to be consumed, but as a mystery, free and open, to which
we are called alongside in covenant, not exploitation.
CONCLUSIONS
In recent years, an abundance of books has been published articulating the importance of
Christian practices for forming Christian character. 17 Such work pursues an important
direction for the church. However, too often these practices are perceived as adjunctive to
a consumerist lifestyle, readily “stapled” onto the edges despite the distorted central
structures of work and spending. Christian practices contain power to resist and
thoroughly transform our lives. But such practices are most powerful when Christians
understand the dangers of cultural conformity. In the American context, consumerism
does not simply describe an economic principle or a benign practice consistent with
Christian faith. Consumerism finally involves a worldview, or, as John Cobb suggests, the
first truly global religion, that shapes how we respond to others and ourselves. Churches
may proclaim orthodox doctrines that evoke an understanding of our call to partnership
with God, but unless they are also aware of how social practices, including consumerism,
influence attitudes, sensibilities and responses, we risk ignoring the cultural
contradictions that prevent us from living fully the lives we seek to live.
Certainly, “abstraction,” “erosion of trust,” “invidious comparison” and
“objectification” do not exhaustively describe the impact of consumerism. A fuller account
might involve people gathering to tell stories of their lives, reflecting together on their
alienation and their potential. But, if this account of character formation is incomplete, it
also inadequately reckons with the opposing impulses within us all—that find joy and
community in surprising ways. The system of consumerism is not seamless without
remainder: we find traces of the Holy in the cracks and crevasses of our lives, even in the
midst of consumer culture. We must learn to create more space for these traces and to
15
16
Cavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society, 22.
Cavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society, 51.
See for example, Craig Dykstra, Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices, (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press, 2005); Dorothy C. Bass, Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching
People, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998); Don Saliers and Emily Saliers, A Song to Sing, A Life to
Live: Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,2005); Thomas G. Long,Testimony:
Talking Ourselves into Being Christian, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004); Stephanie Paulsell, Honoring the
Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002); Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the
Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001); Miroslav Volf and
Dorothy C. Bass, Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life,(Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 2002).
17
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find ways to allow their flourishing—not simply on the margins, but from the center
outwards.
What we once perceived as “the ambiguities” of capitalism, have grown more
totalizing, threatening to domesticate the scandalous gospel of Jesus—to make it less wild
and more easily consumable. Such a threat requires that churches become learning
communities, learning to think critically about the threats to Christian faith and creatively
about their call to respond. If the church is to faithfully embody the beauty of God, we
must learn to engage complex issues as the environment, the global economy, poverty and
consumerism. And we must learn to respond on various levels—as individuals and
communities, spiritually as well as politically.
Author: David F. White is Associate Professor of Christian Education at Austin Presbyterian
Theological Seminary in Austin, Texas. His most recent book is Practicing Discernment with
Youth: A Transformative Approach to Youth Ministry (2005). His interests include
alternative pedagogies that engage congregations as learning communities and
communities of resistance to commercial forces.
Email: [email protected]
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