{"id":11803,"date":"2017-02-17T01:59:38","date_gmt":"2017-02-17T09:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=11803"},"modified":"2017-02-17T01:59:38","modified_gmt":"2017-02-17T09:59:38","slug":"faith-as-product-or-just-enough-jesus-to-look-good-on-the-college-app-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/faith-as-product-or-just-enough-jesus-to-look-good-on-the-college-app-please\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith as product or just enough Jesus to look good on the college app, please…."},"content":{"rendered":"

In the thoroughly engaging, if very dense,\u00a0Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture<\/em> Vincent Miller frames consumer culture ‘not as a deformation of belief but as a particular way of engaging religious beliefs that divorces them from practice.’ (Miller, 12)<\/p>\n

This provides the reader with a lens for engaging our consumer society and beginning to understand how that society shapes and influences how we experience religion and express religious belief.<\/p>\n

It is something of a easy cliche to say that faith and\/or religious expression is the perfect antidote to a society overly focused on consumerism and commodification – and, of course, it can be – but Miller highlights well that that viewpoint also often misses the pervasive effects that the consumer society has on our experience of the religion and religious expression itself.<\/p>\n

I have had some very stark experiences of the commodification of our religious experience, especially during my time in youth ministry. \u00a0The first is an image that has been stuck in my head for twenty years now. \u00a0I was working at a very large \u00a0(3,000member) church located in a wealthy suburb of Pittsburgh, with a pretty typical set-up: an ‘early church’ and a ‘late church’ with Sunday school in-between.<\/p>\n

The youth and children’s Sunday school program started at 9:45 each Sunday and the various classes included around 200 kids. \u00a0The image that has stuck with me all this time, however, didn’t actually occur within the Sunday school, but rather, out in the parking lot. It was there, at around 9:30 each week that cars would start lining up, eventually backing up all the way to the road, with parents dropping off their kids for Sunday school. \u00a0Some of the parents would, come back for ‘late’ church after a quick breakfast, some would just come back around noon and pick the kids up….<\/p>\n

At the time, as a 21 year old, it was pretty shocking to me – how could these parents see the value and importance of biblical education for their kids – not to mention the worship and fellowship, but not want or value it for themselves? As I think about it now, I think of it as the first, clearest example of the commodification of religion. \u00a0In that community, membership in our church community had value beyond the religious and moral benefits that we think of, and those parents were in a very real sense ‘purchasing’ a service because of the perceived benefits that it held.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a few years and I am the youth minister at a small church in Fairfield County CT. \u00a0I am standing on the sidelines of a girls high school soccer game, having a conversation with a few parents of youth group kids. \u00a0During the course of the conversation, the topic turns to typical teenage lack of gratitude and expectation. \u00a0At this point one of the parents, casually says, I can always tell when ____ (name withheld to protect the guilty!) needs her ‘yearly dose’ of mission trip.<\/p>\n

And then, she went on to explain to a few of the parents whose kids hadn’t been on a mission trip, all\u00a0the benefits of going on one: the things they learn, how they come back ‘changed’, etc. \u00a0The mom did a fairly good, fairly accurate job describing all of the things that I might have highlighted as the spiritual and practical benefits of a short term mission trip.<\/p>\n

The issue, of course, even more pronounced after engaging with Miller’s work here is this: when religion is experienced as a commodity does that invalidate the benefits of it? \u00a0Were the child’s experiences on the mission trip any less real, meaningful or spiritual because they were ‘purchased’ as a commodity by her parent? \u00a0The same question, of course goes for all of those children dropped off for Sunday school?<\/p>\n

Some other ‘quick hits’ from\u00a0Consuming Religion<\/em> that I found interesting:<\/p>\n