2 posts tagged “market economies”

How do we resist the placement of religion in the private sphere and subvert the impulsive focus on the needs of the individual?  What shapes our conversations about what the church is and should be – the Gospel, or the all-encompassing market?   What does it means to be the people of God in the world?

            I believe that framing our conversations in such a way may help us resist the tendency to seek relevance and legitimacy in the market.  This is quite a contrast to seeing local churches as functional housing for a set of “spiritual” experiences or community activities that are offered as such to the consumer market.  Barry Harvey offers another direction:

Stories that articulate an alternative identity do not stand alone, but are set within a set of social practices that place this identity beyond the reach of either the persecutor or the seducer.  Baptism, table fellowship, disciplines of forgiveness and reconciliation, prayer and fasting, and habits of hospitality that nurture friendships with the poor and outcast enable the followers of Jesus to withstand the pressure of both overt persecution and the subtle seduction of the postmodern risk culture (the market).

Harvey’s vision is for the church to constitute an alternative “public,” or “the people of God.”  The forces of the market will not so easily eclipse such a people, as they are empowered and able to stand in contrast to it.  Harvey here seems to reflect a vision for the church not apparent in contemporary United Methodism or Evangelicalism.  Unfortunately, it appears we are still attractional in our thinking. 

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.