Outside In
In the musical In the Heights the main character is Usnavi, a second-generation immigrant from the Dominican Republic living in Washington Heights in New York City. Over the course of his life he has been told that his goal in life needs to be to move back to the Dominican Republic, because that is home – the Heights is only a stopover. Usnavi spends the majority of the musical trying to achieve this goal. Finally, he has the money to go only to discover that his home is really the community he has lived in his whole life. In the finale of the show he sings,
Yeah, I’m a streetlight!
Chillin’ in the heat!
I illuminate the stories of the people in the street
Some have happy endings
Some are bittersweet
But I know them all and that’s what makes my life complete…
Abuela I’m sorry
But I ain’t goin’ back because I’m telling your story
And I can say goodbye to you smilin’, I found my island
I been on it this whole time
I’m home!1
It is only in the revelation that the Heights are his home that he finally finds contentment in being there.
In Consuming Religion Vincent Miller makes the case that the rise in consumer culture in the west has bled into the way that the west understands religion and spirituality. The rise of visual advertising has altered the way we have understood desire and in turn infected our understanding of desire for God such that our interactions with God have become more transactional than relational.
I think that Miller is generally right about how the church in the west has become increasingly more consumeristic in how it behaves. I think that the change initiated with visual advertising exacerbated a problem that has been festering in the western church for centuries rather than initiated it itself. Christianity has always been at its core somewhat transactional. Whether it is Catholics buying and selling indulgences or the alter call “say this prayer and you’ll be saved” or the excesses of the health and wealth gospel, our understanding of salvation has always been transactional. To a certain degree there is no way of getting around it since the Bible largely frames Christs work as a transaction. Regardless of whether you see Christ as the lamb slain as the ultimate sacrifice or you see him as the scapegoat it is still a transaction, the question being who the transaction is between – Christ and the Father or Christ and humanity. Human frailty being what it is, this aspect of soteriology was bound to be exploited and twisted for selfish means at some point. It is only too easy to see the transactions with physical things and equate those transactions with the transaction of salvation.
Being a pragmatist and knowing this consumerism is happening and that there is a transactional nature to Christianity at its core, my mind automatically goes to finding solutions. I can think of two possible solutions that go hand in hand, building community and the hospitality ministries. Both of these rely on us putting our focus outward to those in need.
It has become somewhat faddish for churches to invite people in saying that their church is home-ish. In fact, the Catholic Church in the US has an entire advertising campaign build around the phrase “Catholics come home.” I am sure that most of the churches that proclaim their homeliness are earnest in their declarations, but there is something somewhat off-putting about a church declaring its own virtue to complete strangers. Vibrant community is attractive on its own and not in need of patting itself on the back. While some will come for their own selfish reasons it is the vibrancy of the community that will draw them out of themselves and into care for the community. Much like Usnavi who could only see what he was told to desire until he saw how his life was really intertwined with the life of his community.
Similarly, to the way a vibrant community draws people out of themselves, the hospitality ministries – caring for the poor and sick, orphan care, visitation, and a dozen or so other similar ministries – draws the person performing them out of herself and into the work and care for the other. This outward focus can counterintuitively draw them deeper into themselves and the Spirit.
The key, whether it is building community and/or the hospitality ministries or something else, is to get people to care for others. Ultimately, selfishness is what is driving the increased sense of spiritual consumerism and transactionalism. Anything that we can do to help people out of their selfishness and to care for others will lead them to fulfill the desire they have been (unsuccessfully) trying to fulfill.
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1 Lin-Manuel Miranda and Company, “Finale,” by Lin-Manuel Miranda on In The Heights (Original Broadway Cast Recording), 2008.
About the Author
Sean Dean
An expat of the great state of Maine where the lobster is cheap and the winters are brutal I've settled in as a web developer in Tacoma, Washington. As a foster-adoptive parent of 3 beautiful boys, I have deep questions about the American church's response to the public health crisis that is our foster system.14 responses to “Outside In”
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Did you and Rhonda plan to converse your titles? How clever.
Actually, we were on the phone just tonight going over how we’re going to title our posts for next week. I’m just playing with you, but that is funny.
Sean, thank you for this. You hit at something I hadn’t quite articulated but is part of the convolution. There is a kind of transactional nature to Christianity and it is so easy to cheapen it, especially when the culture has not been in opposition to it (which is changing I believe in the US). I wonder if countries where Christianity isn’t the major religion experience this differently? Appreciate you!
It would be interesting to see how non-Christian majority countries understand Christianity. Then again, if you look down the comments a bit, it seems I’m wrong – possibly.
Hey, Sean, I loved your post. We were both on the same wave-length with regards to a solution against commercialism in the church. I agree with you that the key is to get people to care for others. I wrote about the same solution in my post, Sean. The gift of servanthood helps people to not focus on themselves, but instead reach out to help others in their brokenness. And I agree that it fulfills our desires, because our purpose on this earth is to live like Christ in LOVE. Thanks for your reflection, Sean.
Sean, interestingly, I thought about the Catholics and the indulgences they used to charge for as well as remembering being told to light a candle and say so many prayers as penance after confession. The only thing about lighting the candles was that you had to pay money to light a candle; only a dime for the small ones, but it was still transactional. I do think the Catholics have something with their come home campaign because many of those churches had the hospitality you mentioned as well as community work. I agree that this is what all churches need. I joined my current church 15 years ago because of that very feeling of community that I felt growing up, minus the white powder coated donuts. I do think that this ministry work can counter consumerism. Thank you for this post!
Hi. Written from call phone sorry. Two comments. I’m not sure that the Bible declares a transaction. I think that the latter power of Roman Catholicism merely harnessed developing economic trade realities in a particular era. Likewise, reformation theology was effected by the same trade concepts and we have lived in that financial transactional worldview for over 500 years. Quite frankly Roman Catholics prior to that time weren’t that bad. In fact the thinking that they were is little more the the selling of evangelicals indulgences to win those poor faithless Catholics from assured damnation. For some years theologians have toyed with the idea that our obsession with crucicetrism has deadened our ability to see that the most crucial part of the salvation story is the incarnation, first in geneis and then in the Gospels. First, God incarnates with the created order, bringing it into being and sustaining it. Then incarnating with humanity and living among us and remaining so through the Holy Spirit. If incarnation is primary, then all transaction is moot. Imagine what Christian faith would look like if incarnation had been the axles around which salvation is offered, rather than the cross. That should get your mind wheels turning.
Second, incarnation moves us us toward ordinary and robust community, a community of transformation. The ‘God is with us community’, and always has been. People come home to community based in Christ and in doing so, they come home to God. The problem for too many churches is that people have to believe before they can belong (transaction) – I think it’s the other way round – belong and then believe. No transaction required.
I’m responding over here, as this was where you directed me from my post. I appreciate your challenge on this. Would love to hear more actually on your understanding of transaction. I think there are a number of verses that I’ve always read as indicating a transaction but am very open to reading differently. 1 Cor 6:20 ‘you were bought at a price’, 1 Tim 2.6 ‘Jesus who game himself as a ransom’, being redeemed was about a financial transaction to be bought back. I think there are many angles on the cross, and certainly appreciate your critique of being overly crucicentric even at that, but to me it seems that at the very least metaphorically it seems biblical to wrestle to with the transactional nature of the cross. Or are you drawing out whether there is a transaction demanded of us as people? On your second point, I wholeheartedly agree that we under emphasis the incarnation and also support the reordering towards belong and then believe. On that point a hearty Amen.
Response to your query from Seans Post. Putting my neck on the block here:
The substitutionary understanding of Jesus’ death “was not central in the first thousand years of Christianity.” In fact the first systematic articulation of the cross as “payment for sin” happened just over nine hundred years ago in 1098 in St. Anselm’s treatise Cur Deus Homo? [Why Did God Become Human?] Anselm’s intent was to provide a rational argument for the necessity of the incarnation and death of Jesus.
So, he did, with a cultural model drawn from his time and place: the relationship of a medieval lord to his peasants. If a peasant disobeyed the lord, could the lord simply forgive if he wanted to? No. Because that might suggest disobedience was of no consequence. Instead, a payment must be made because the the honor and orders of the lord were at stake.
Anselm applied that social concept to our relationship with God. We have been disobedient and require punishment. Though God loves us and desires to forgive us, the restitution for sin must be made. Jesus, being human and fabulous paid for that sin in his death.
A thousand years later, this remains the way most western Christians view the scriptures. though not all. The substitutionary atonement “theory” (and that’s all it is) implies that the Christ’s appearance in Jesus was a hashed together backup plan when the first option didn’t pan out.
Certainly animals were sacrificed in the Judaic temple, but it was most likely about making something sacred by giving it as a gift to God; sacrifices were about thanksgiving, petition, purification, and reconciliation, not substitution. The temple metaphors of atonement, satisfaction, ransom, paying the price, and opening the gates, are just that—metaphors of transformation and movement. I think they were intended to be transformational not transactional. Is God that needy, unloving, rule-bound, and unforgiving? if so, did Jesus really mean it when he said, “Blessed are the gentle, the merciful, the peacemakers.”?
The Franciscans and Dominicans took divergen paths on this. If you like, the Franciscans held what is really the alternate orthodoxy. Paraphrased, John Duns Scotus (13-14 Cent) said that Jesus wasn’t trying to solve any human problems through the incarnation and crucifixion; God didn’t need Jesus to die on the cross to decide to love humanity. “God’s love was infinite from the first moment of creation; the cross was Love’s dramatic portrayal in space and time.” In simple terms, that was the Franciscan nonviolent at-one-ment theory.
The point of the cross is to transform humanity, it’s not a transaction to transform God. We change our minds about God, not God changing God’s mind about us. The cross is untainted gift, it is God’s dramatic outpouring of love.
In worshipping Jesus the scapegoat, we were supposed to learn that scapegoating was lie – Looking at the life of Jesus, the great sin of the world was and remains, ignorant hatred, fear, and legitimated violence.
Sean I appreciate your landing point on building community. How do you reckon we cultivate community that resists consuming one another? Ok, I realize I’m suggesting some sort of spiritual canabalism often goes on. It’s a thought in progress. But I do think there has been significant damage done, by our construction as consumers, to our cappacity to engage in healthy community. How might we recognize this? How might we resist it? What does ‘vibrant community’ look like? Because I’ve been in many environments were it’s defined as lots of people showing up and that places us back into a consumerist mindset.
Jenn, I would define vibrant community as a group that is growing in intimacy with each other while also open to critique. Too often community is the thing that fits my needs right now or is building me up. But I think vibrant community draws people to participation for the benefit of the members more than the self. I really have no idea how to create that type of community, but I’ve seen it in the past. It’s sort of a utopic vision for community, unfortunately most utopias fall apart about the time someone has to wash the dishes, which is why I think a vibrant community is always open to critique. I don’t think it has any number attached to it. Ideally a marriage is a vibrant community of 2. It’s really an idea I need to flesh out more. I think you’re right that too often the term community gets floated as a means for people to buy into something that makes them feel better without regard for the rest of the group or as a means for gathering volunteers to do work no-one else wants to do.
Sean,
Fun post. I love In the Heights and was actually just speaking last week with someone who lived in Washington Heights about the power of the show. Moving!
Have you ever witnessed places that have this community that you speak of? I think of Iona, or the seminary movements that Bonhoeffer helped create in Germany, but are there certain places that you are thinking about or lifting up?
Jacob, mostly I’m thinking about my church now. It’s not perfect, but there is a buzz around town and people are being drawn to the church for reasons none of us really understand. I was mostly working off a theory that I need to flesh out.
Sean, I think you have hit the proverbial nail on the head. That is, selfishness is driving much of the consumer culture. The church needs to respond not with a competitive strategy for a “better” alternative consumption/commodification combination, but with a fearless pursuit of the other. Your focus on authentic community and hospitality is spot on, it does not need a marketing campaign to make it look “cooler”. Thanks for your thoughtful yet pragmatic approach to wrestling with these contemporary issues.