{"id":11763,"date":"2017-02-16T16:07:44","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T00:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=11763"},"modified":"2017-02-16T16:07:44","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T00:07:44","slug":"viewing-faith-through-the-lens-of-consumerism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/viewing-faith-through-the-lens-of-consumerism\/","title":{"rendered":"Viewing Faith Through the Lens of Consumerism"},"content":{"rendered":"
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>– \u00a01 Corinthians 13:1<\/div>\n
This verse has always intrigued me.\u00a0 As someone who has a desire to know God, this verse is a constant reminder that, until the day I reach heaven, that knowledge will be filtered by my experiences, my culture, and my worldview.\n\nAs I read the book Consuming Religion<\/strong><\/em> by Vincent J. Miller, I was struck by a thought\u2026 \u201chow much of my understanding of God, Christ, the Church, and Christian living is influenced by the fact that I was raised in a consumer-driven society?\u201d\n\nMiller\u2019s 2003 work clearly identifies the subject matter of the book in the first sentence: \u201cThis book is concerned with the ways which consumer culture transforms religious belief and practice\u201d (p. 15).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This book does a thorough job of summarizing both historical and contemporary issues related to consumerism and faith (especially Catholicism). The discussion of the way that the Industrial revolution changed our society was fascinating.\u00a0 With the rise of factories, productivity went up exponentially.\n\u00a0\nI really enjoyed the discussion of how the rise of single family dwellings changed the American psyche (p. 70).\u00a0\u00a0 In an agrarian culture, large extended families live together, work together, raise children together, and work together.\u00a0 For example, my mother was one of fourteen children, born on a farm in East Tennessee in 1941.\u00a0\u00a0 Being child number 13, she was raised by her adult siblings and did not have much of a relationship with her parents.\u00a0\u00a0 For a farming family, children were an asset.\u00a0 All of them worked hard every day.\u00a0 In today\u2019s world, having 14 children would not be viewed as a good financial decision.\n\nExpendable income, combined more leisure time and better print media, let to the rise of a flurry of advertising in the early twentieth century.\u00a0 Advertising consumables went from a stoic description in a newspaper to a full-page advertisement that blended the product with a feeling or experience.\u00a0 As Miller puts it \u201cAdvertising has shifted from arguing for the usefulness of products to associating them with unrelated values and desires\u201d (p. 189).  An example is the Philip Morris advertisement below, the image of a loving mother is sweet and conveys wholesomeness and love.  The visual sells a good feeling, then attaching a random product to that feeling.\n\"\"<\/a>\nAs I was traveling back from the London Advance, I viewed a documentary on the airplane about \u201cGeneration X\u201d.\u00a0 As I watched, I learned that my generation was the most advertised generation in human history.\u00a0 The program explained that the rise latchkey kids, combined with afterschool programs marketed incessantly to young viewers, created a generation of consumers.\u00a0\u00a0 Interesting enough, this documentary proposed that Generation X is a generation of skeptics.\u00a0 Incessant advertising combined with the Watergate scandal, the unsavory end of the Vietnam War, and later scandals with television preachers, formed a generation that constantly asked: \u201cWhat are you trying to sell me?\u201d  As I think back on this documentary, I can see how consumer culture can shape the way we see church.  The term \"church shopper\" has crept into our modern vocabulary as church leaders seek ways to attract and keep church members. \n\nConsuming Religion<\/em> <\/strong>examines the ways that religion has been commoditized.\u00a0 An examination of a hyper-individualism of faith is characterized as \u201cwhere each person is isolated in her or his own vague, personal creed, lacking resourced to relate his or her individual concerns to broader commodities\u201d (p. 89).\n\u00a0\nIn the end, Miller concludes that \u201cwhen consumption becomes the dominant cultural practice, belief is systematically misdirected from the traditional religious practices into consumption\u201d (p.225).\n This book challenged me to take a deep look into my personal spiritual journey, with the realization that my generation was programmed to view everything, including faith, with the eyes of a consumer.\n\n\n\"\"<\/a><\/pre>\n
<\/div>\n
Miller, Vincent Jude. Consuming religion: Christian faith and practice in a consumer culture<\/i>. New York: Continuum, 2004.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.\u00a0– \u00a01 Corinthians 13:1 This verse has always intrigued me.\u00a0 As someone who has a desire to know God, this verse is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":11767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[747,371,831,372],"class_list":["post-11763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cocanougher","tag-consumerism","tag-marketing","tag-religion","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}