Are you deeply concerned by much of what global capitalism has created, despite it’s wealth-producing potential? You should be, according to Benjamin Barber.
Global inequality has left the planet with two kinds of potential customers: 1) the poor of the undeveloped world, with vast and underserved needs but not the means to fulfill them, and 2) the first-world rich, who have lots of disposable income but few real needs.
While an earlier capitalist economy, backed by a Protestant ethos, was built around selling goods like timber and buckwheat that served people’s needs, today’s consumerist economy sustains profitability by creating needs, convincing us that Wii’s and iPhones are necessary. It has done so by promoting what Barber calls an ethos of infantilization, a mind-set of “induced childishness” in which adults pursue adolescent lifestyles.
Since basic human needs - food, shelter, clothing - have long since been met for most people in the developed world, marketing professionals now bang their heads together to reinvent and recreate goods in order to sell more stuff. Aware that most of our needs were met long ago, they set about eternalizing childhood desires and fabricating new adult ones.
Barber records a moment when purchased bottled water in his London hotel. Bottled water, in a country where clean water flows straight from the tap, is perhaps the ultimate in manufactured need. "Over a billion people are without drinking water," says Barber. "Why don't we find out ways to get the water they need to them, instead of new ways of getting water to us?"
All this makes Consumed sound like depressing reading. In many ways, it is, and the idea that Western shoppers are to blame for environmental and cultural degradation, even if they have been hoodwinked into buying unnecessary products, is a heavy cross to bear.
Modernity has powerfully shaped the church, although we are often unaware of its assumptions and commitments that reside in our theology and practices. Postmodernity have challenged these assumptions and commitments, putting many Christians (particularly evangelicals, it seems) on the defensive. I think Smith makes a good argument that this cultural moment provides an opportunity for serious work in philosophical theory to serve the practice of the church. As Francis Schaeffer did before him, he believes that we must take philosophy seriously, as philosophy does have practical implications.
I especially liked Smith’s treatment of Michael Foucault, the postmodern philosopher who criticized the formative nature of political, economic and societal structures. Knowledge, Foucault claims, is not a neutrally determined reality but a construct shaped by networks of power. Smith uses the example of the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next to highlight how institutions attempt to shape people into what they perceive as normative. Discerning Christians can concede much of Foucault’s critique of modernity’s power structures. What mechanisms of control has the church ignored, or even allowed to conform it into their image? One thinks here of Constantinian Christianity, when the church became nearly indistinguishable from the Roman Empire. When denominations and their churches grieve their numerical decline, I have to ask with some skepticism: Are we longing to participate in God’s mission in the world, or do we long for the days when the church held a privileged place in the cultural centre?
Foucalt helps us to see the role of discipline in our understanding of truth, which begs the question: Who or what shapes our ecclesiology?
However, not all discipline is bad, explains Smith. Demonstrating how the church can respond to modernity’s emphasis on consumerism and individualism by using its counter-forming practices, he writes: “Discipline and formation are good insofar as they are directed toward the end, or telos, that is proper to human beings: to glorify God and enjoy him forever (Westminster Catechism, question 1).”
Whole-heartedly adopting what church
marketers refer to as a “marketing orientation” does in fact change “the
character of the Gospel” and “the self understanding of the community of
believers.” Adopting a marketing orientation produces
more than superficial veneers on deeper identities, when in fact such
practices become substitute identities – forms of acquired character that has
the potential to go all the way down to the core. Because church marketing defines the purpose
of the church solely in terms of attracting the surrounding community, it
struggles to reflect God’s character and glory to a watching world. Instead, church marketing creates a church
that reflects the culture rather than shaping it.
To be true to its nature and purpose, perhaps the Church needs to stop thinking attractional – ‘Come and check us out’ – and to start thinking incarnational. By incarnational mission, I mean the understanding and practice of Christian witness that is rooted in and shaped by the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We must be sensitive to the considerable effort it takes for someone outside the Christian community to take the initiative to discover an alternative way of life. As shown by Jesus and his interactions – not just with temple authorities, but with the poor and the rejected – the Kingdom typically lies outside existing religious structures. In a post-Christian culture where so many have no understanding of the basic Christian message and do not identify with the traditional Christian subculture, we must step out of our building, and take the Gospel into our diverse community.
Another City is not an extensive ecclesiology, but an attempt to explain the stance that the church should have towards a post-Christendom world. For the early Christians, Barry Writes, the Church was "another city," so we cannot withdraw into private religous experience or worship in congregations that are functionally equivalent to gated communities. To this end, Harvey examines the apostolic and patristic vision of the Church not as a separate community, but as another city existing within the earthly city. He outlines the collapse of this ecclesiology from the time of Constantine to the medieval and modern periods. Harvey traces the blurring of the distinction of heavenly and earthly city that followed the Constantinian shift, to the abstraction of religion from secular concerns that took place as the result of a Cartesian shift.
I can't help but think that if American voters were better informed, Ron Paul would be leading in the polls. Do we really have freedom in America if we really have only two choices on election day?
When considering the church as a system, one must consider those overlooked parts of the whole. I submit that, in the North American congregations, these overlooked ‘parts’ have been women, ethnic minorities, and those on the lower end of the economic scale. Ervin Laszlo describes that function in terms of values. "Values are goals which behavior strives to realize. Any activity which is oriented toward the accomplishment of some end is value-oriented activity. (p. 78)" The church, in a systems view, could be seen as a system whose parts are working together to embody the values of the gospel. The experience of women, minorities, and the poor as feeling marginalized, rather than part of the whole, could be viewed as a manifestation of non-optimum performance. I anticipate that by heeding stories from the margins might move our congregations toward a more full articulation and practice of Christian faith. Incorporating the story as told by marginalized persons recognizes a new significance of part of the whole Christian body. It will also support the church’s efforts to engage the unchurched with the gospel as people hear their own lives represented in the community’s self-expression. Heeding stories from the margins captures the feedback necessary for the health of the system.
Many still argue that consumerism is necessary for a market economy to thrive. Benjamin Barber, in his book "Consumed," challenges that assumption, arguing that consumerism is damaging to our culture, and ultimately to capitalism itself. Here he is on the Colbert Report.
I am looking forward to getting together with the book club again. Now, what to read? There will never be a shortage of books for us to read, so below are a couple of suggestions that might provoke us to thought as well as to action. Please let me know if there is anything you would like for the group to consider for upcoming book clubs, and I'll post it to the site.
In EVERYTHING MUST CHANGE, McLaren provides his critics with even more ammunition, starting with the book's title. If "everything must change," then McLaren is saying that the Christian message must change, right?
Or perhaps it's the way we interpret the gospel and apply the "good news" to global crises that needs to change. For McLaren, that change begins by asking two questions that he describes as the shaping questions of his life: "What are the biggest problems in the world?" and "What does Jesus have to say about these global crises?"
And neither is the author of The Terrorist Watch, by Ron Kessler, who just happens to be married to a member of our group. He discusses his new book with John Stewart on The Daily Show, and it is now available at a book store near you. This promises to be an interesting read, and likely to stir up more debate surrounding the decision to invade Iraq, and the use of torture methods. An interesting factiod -- I first read a Ron Kessler book way back in college -- that book was Inside the CIA.
After reading McKnight's book, I realize how little the church has understood atonement. How easier it is to study and speculate upon (or even worse, ignore intellectual engagement altogether) atonement than to practice. Is this a harsh assessment of the church? Consider our reception of former inmates. PEP seems to get it. Do you think murderers and drug dealers deserve a second chance? See the "Made New" video and give it some thought.
