I Can’t See the Forest for the Trees
Consumerism has taken the west by storm. In 2020, Relevant Magazine published that “Nearly half the world’s toys are in America. Despite making up just over 3 percent of the global population of children, American kids consume 40 percent of the world’s toys.”[1]
Consumerist culture runs deep in the west with the temptation to shop and consume endlessly. Unfortunately, this is true even amongst many evangelicals.
Several of my dearest friends have spent a significant amount of time in a non-western context, where conditions are modest in comparison to their American lives. When preparing to move to the middle east, Kerry and Tom gladly sold all of their possessions and said goodbye to their friends, family, and American comforts. They spent 10 hard years laboring in the middle east, being a light to their unreached neighbors and friends. While living in the middle east, they made many sacrifices that are often taken for granted by westerners. But when Kerry and Tom transitioned back to the States, Kerry found herself returning to old habits of purchasing, collecting, and consuming. Although she found this anxiety provoking compared to her simple life in the middle east, the temptation to conform to western consumerism was difficult to resist.
When I first felt called to missions as a teenager, I thought I would go overseas and leave all of my western comforts behind. 20 years later, it’s hard to imagine leaving these comforts behind.
But where did this consumerism come from, especially within the church?
This week’s reading reminded me of the idiom, I can’t see the forest for the trees. I have been immersed in evangelicalism and capitalism my entire life, and this week’s reading has challenged me to step outside of my worldview to see how capitalism has impacted evangelicals in western contexts.
Evangelicalism can be hard to pinpoint, but in Evangelicalism in modern Britain: a history from the 1730s to the 1980s, David Bebbington describes four beliefs that mark evangelicalism:
- The belief that lives need to be changed or converted
- The belief that Christians should live out their faith in action
- The belief in the authority of the Bible
- The belief in the importance of Christ’s death and sacrifice on the cross [2]
Jason Clark argues that the belief of personal faith and the authority of Scripture intersects with a capitalist culture of individual initiative and economic freedom, leading to evangelical beliefs that support capitalism principles such as individualism and personal accountability. [3]
Sarwar Jahan and Ahmed Saber Mahmu describe capitalism in this way, “Capitalism is often thought of as an economic system in which private actors own and control property in accord with their interests, and demand and supply freely set prices in markets in a way that can serve the best interests of society. The essential feature of capitalism is the motive to make a profit.”[4]
So how does this relate to evangelicalism? As capitalism has grown in the west, so too has consumerism infiltrated the church. The allure of materialism tempts evangelicals to prioritize financial success over the tenets of evangelicalism.
This has been a problem for some decades. In Under the Big Top: Big Tent Revivalism and American Culture, 1885-1925, Josh McMullen explains that modern evangelicals face the same challenges with consumerism as big tent revivalists did in the mid-1920s. [3] Leisure activities such as motion pictures became the competition of big tent revivals that set the stage for the relationship between evangelicalism and consumer culture.
May the Lord teach all of us to walk in his ways and give us strength to resist temptation to conform to the patterns of this world.
Bibliography
[1] Jesse Carey, “11 Stats That Will Change the Way You Think About Consumerism,” RELEVANT, n.d., https://relevantmagazine.com/current/11-stats-will-change-way-you-think-about-consumerism/.
[2] David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, Transferred to digital printing (London: Routledge, 2005), 2-3.
[3] Jason Paul Clark, “Evangelicalism and Capitalism: A Reparative Account and Diagnosis of Pathogeneses in the Relationship,” Faculty Publications – Portland Seminary. 132 (June 2018), https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/gfes/132.
[4] Sarwar Jahan and Ahmed Saber Mahmu, “What Is Capitalism?,” International Monetary Fund, n.d., https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Back-to-Basics/Capitalism#:~:text=Capitalism%20is%20often%20thought%20of,motive%20to%20make%20a%20profit.
[5] Josh McMullen, Under the Big Top: Big Tent Revivalism and American Culture, 1885-1925 (Oxford University Press, 2015), https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199397860.001.0001.
About the Author
Christy
9 responses to “I Can’t See the Forest for the Trees”
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Hi Christy,
While reading Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s, were there any aspects you wished David Bebbington had addressed more thoroughly?
Hi Shela, there’s not so much that I wish he had addressed more thoroughly, but more so wish I could have read more thoroughly. Especially on activism – my love language is acts of service and I’m passionate about evangelism. However, I have also experienced anxiety in trying to prove my faith by my works, so I wish I had more time to consider the history of how evangelical thought has evolved over time.
Hi Christy, I appreciate your connecting your friends’ mission time and then reentry to a culture of plenty. I don’t know that wants are necessarily bad unless they start taking the place of God. However, in our world, sometimes I find it hard to differentiate between wants and needs while shopping. Most of the time I shop the outer perimeter of the store where most of the “needs” are located. Do those lines ever get blurred for you and if so how do you manage it?
Christy, thanks for your blog. The reading this week was eye-opening for me as well. It seems that unrestrained capitalism has influenced the evangelical church more than we even realized. As we move forward, how might we help followers of Jesus actively resist the effects of capitalism and with a kingdom- shaped worldview instead?
Hi Christy, I am interested in your comment about competition between revivalism and cinema. Do I understand correctly that people became less interested in revival meetings as their attention was drawn elsewhere? Can you say more about that and the implications for today?
Hi Christy! Thank you for sharing this experience. I love the culture of plenty analogy. As we seem to be driven by consumerism increasingly, can you share how we can engage better in the revivalism area? I know there will be a revival one day, but how we get there is the big question.
Christy, this is a very thought-provoking article. You stated, “Leisure activities such as motion pictures became the competition of big tent revivals that set the stage for the relationship between evangelicalism and consumer culture.” Can you unpack more about how big tent revivals set the stage for the relationship between evangelicalism and consumer culture? What are the specific correlations or elements of causality?
Hi Christy, I resonated with your friends’ experience of selling everything they had and moving to the Middle East. There is no experience quite like it. I would have to say some of my biggest challenges in North Africa have come from deeply ingrained capitalistic tendencies. I get frustrated when stores do not have the products I want (e.g., chips and cream cheese). I have also struggled with coming from a very individualistic society and trying to relate with those from a communal culture. Living overseas requires a lot of dismantling of unnecessary “priorities.” I believe the same type of dismantling is necessary in the Western church. What is a step we can take personally to begin the dismantling of misplaced priorities in Western Evangelicalism?
Hi, Christy, thank you for your post. I grew up in church or denomination that was the result of evangelical missionary work. I do really appreciate the work they did but living their comfort to reach out to our tiny islands. I went to a small bible school that was staffed with missionary. The evangelical mission that came to our island was from Germany, is this the same one as the one in the US? Thanks.