{"id":16359,"date":"2018-02-08T12:41:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-08T20:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=16359"},"modified":"2018-02-08T12:41:42","modified_gmt":"2018-02-08T20:41:42","slug":"there-is-a-way-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/there-is-a-way-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"There Is A Way Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Jesus made his first visit to the Temple in Jerusalem, according to John (the synoptics only have Jesus visit Jerusalem once at the end of his life), he was upset (one could argue he was livid) that his Father\u2019s Temple had been turned into a marketplace to buy and sell religious goods to pilgrims who desired to follow the customs of animal sacrifice for the atonement of sins.[1]<\/a> There are a couple problems Jesus saw here that did not have much to do with trade in and of itself. He was first upset that the purpose of the Temple\u2014to worship God\u2014was blurred by an outdoor market. Second, there was an element of injustice in that the market was held in the court of the Gentiles, as though the worshipping of God by Gentiles was not all that meaningful. Third, though Jesus doesn\u2019t say this, it seems as though there\u2019s an element of indulgence practice going on, where the poor who cannot afford exotic animals for slaughter, still needed to purchase a dove, which meant, essentially, that one had to purchase his atonement. Did this mean that if a worshipper was too poor to purchase any animal, that she could not be forgiven for her sins? How did Jesus think about consumption before capitalism gave birth to consumerism? Did he see an erosion of religious values and practices? It seems to me that though Jesus loved rich people as well as the poor (think Zacchaeus), he wasn\u2019t all that comfortable with money nor was he uncomfortable without it. He seemed to be immune to its force and power to corrupt.<\/p>\n

The fact that the Bible does not know of a \u201cconsumer culture,\u201d renders Vincent Miller\u2019s work is all the more urgent for the 21st<\/sup> century Church (especially in the West). Miller argues the pervasiveness with which consumer culture forms us to see the world through the lens of \u201ccommodification,\u201d blind to it in fact, and how this commodification of culture is transferred into our religious communities\u2019 imaginations.<\/p>\n

Unlike many social and cultural critics who offer little in the way of any solution to the perceived problems, Miller includes a constructive chapter for the Church to consider in navigating the church\u2019s role in consumer culture. Miller presents a key issue for consideration: \u201cRather than a conflict between cultures, we face a cultural infrastructure that is capable of absorbing all other cultures as \u2018content\u2019 to be commodified, distributed and consumed. This changes our relationship to religious beliefs and practices profoundly. They continue to be revered and celebrated, but are increasingly deprived of their ability to influence and shape our individual, interpersonal, and communal lives.\u201d[2]<\/a> In Chapter 7, Miller addresses the question of how theology and practice can resist commodification, and he takes a \u201cconcrete\u201d and \u201ctactical\u201d approach for religious communities.<\/p>\n

Miller does this in two ways. First, he offers ways to counter consumer culture and its powerful force of commodification, in general. Second, he offers ways to counter the consumption of religion more specifically. To the first, Miller suggests lifestyle changes and a conscious awareness of consumption and commodification that many Christians in the West today are already doing today, intuitively, while of course the masses perhaps are not. Purchasing fair trade products, choosing to live more simply, avoiding cheap chicken, and choosing not to purchase products made in unjust labor factories, are a few individual practices that can be done to decrease the demand of commodification. He also suggests setting up \u201calternative economies\u201d that do not play by the same brutal rules of consumer economies.<\/p>\n

These examples encouraged me as I was reminded of the Highline Food Bank that our church started twenty years ago, along with a scholarship fund for at risk children in Honduras, along with a recovery house for women on the street, along with a micro-lending ministry for vocational development of under-resourced peoples, along with a developing multi-faceted partnership with four public schools in our area. But these efforts, while they provide some level of congregational awareness, they have not definitively changed how the congregation members live their daily lives. Even our mission projects have become commodities where certain people have a sense of \u201cownership.\u201d We\u2019re still \u201cconsuming food from nowhere\u201d and \u201cwearing clothes made by no one.\u201d[3]<\/a> So there\u2019s clearly a need to demystify the origins of our commodities.<\/p>\n

The Advent Conspiracy is an interesting and popular ministry for evangelical congregations who are seeking to live Christianly during the peak season of consumption in America. Personally, I\u2019ve not introduced this ministry to our church yet because I fear it will be perceived as \u201cjust another rant against consumerism\u201d that won\u2019t actually change anyone\u2019s lifestyle, but just make them feel guilty about their bondage. But maybe guilt is not a bad place to start. Afterall, we\u2019re guilty of supporting economic systems that oppress, for example, banana farmers in Ecuador. The choice then becomes, feel rightfully guilty about our choices of spending, or change our choices of spending. Awareness is key to Miller\u2019s understanding of how to counter the commodification of culture. He writes, \u201cOnce people are aware of the disconnection between their beliefs and the practices through which they attempt to enact them, they are freed to pursue more direct alternatives.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

With regard to countering the commodification of religion, Miller suggests a two-pronged approach. First, there is a need to \u201creembed\u201d our religious artifacts, doctrines and practices \u201cwithin their historical tradition and the ongoing life of the community.\u201d[5]<\/a> This argument positions mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic communities at an advantage over free-church, non-denominational or even Baptist communities who have to do a lot more work to \u201cre-embed\u201d as they have already disconnected themselves (usually through schism) from a pre-consumer culture historical tradition. The second is to \u201cstrengthen popular agency,\u201d with clergy, other leaders, and new communication structures. [6]<\/a><\/p>\n

In his article, \u201cRehabilitating Willow Creek,\u201d Aaron James draws on Miller and DeCerteau to analyze \u201cmegachurches\u201d like Willow Creek and Saddleback as glaring examples of the \u201ccommodification of religion.\u201d But James looks at the subtle tactics of consumers in these institutions rather than their professed beliefs, and challenges Miller\u2019s conclusion that megachurches are unable to make genuine and sincere disciples of Christ because religion is sold to them rather than stewarded, and therefore even a conversion to Christianity is related to by the convert (unconsciously) as a commodity. While he assumes Miller\u2019s assertion regarding the complicity of mega-churches with the commodification of religion and the subsequent erosion Christian faithfulness, he does suggest that these churches are able to use consumerism tactically for the sake of the gospel, by the use of memory. He argues that while it is easy to look at mega-church architecture as a mirror of consumer culture in their lack of Christian symbols, the reality is that these churches are in fact preserving an historical memory that goes back to the Puritans and other non-liturgical expressions of Christian faith. James argues that while the form of mega-church architecture looks and smells like consumer culture, it acts \u201ctactically upon it\u201d by using it for its own purpose of preserving their evangelical Puritan history. [7]<\/a><\/p>\n

The problem with James\u2019 efforts to redirect critiques of mega-churches is simply the lack of awareness that Miller suggests is paramount to countering the commodification of religion. In my experience growing up 4 miles away from Saddleback Church as it began in a high school gymnasium, never once have I heard of Saddleback refer to this history, or teach church history. There is no \u201cawareness\u201d in most of these congregations of new religious seekers (unless they are part of historic, mainline denominations), that they really have any history between the time of Jesus and our consumer world today. The imagination in these congregations is the sense that because we have forgotten our history, we will start from scratch by integrating today\u2019s world with the world of the Bible and forget everything that happened in between. Therefore, their Puritan history is rendered ineffectual.<\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> John 2:13-25<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Vincent Jude Miller,\u00a0Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture<\/em>\u00a0(New York: Continuum, 2004), 179.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 184.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 193.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 194<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid., 209-219.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Aaron James, \u201cRehabilitating Willow Creek:: Megachurches, De Certeau, and the tactics of navigating consumer culture,\u201d\u00a0Christian Scholar’s Review<\/em>\u00a043, no. 1 (Fall 2013): 21-39.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Jesus made his first visit to the Temple in Jerusalem, according to John (the synoptics only have Jesus visit Jerusalem once at the end of his life), he was upset (one could argue he was livid) that his Father\u2019s Temple had been turned into a marketplace to buy and sell religious goods to pilgrims […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":0,"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":[],"class_list":["post-16359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16359","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\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16360,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16359\/revisions\/16360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}