I am, was, will be, always have, sometimes am a \u201cgood girl\u201d depending on your definition.\u00a0 I grew up most of my life in North Dakota, where there was not a lot to get in trouble with, except the normal teenage stuff.\u00a0 As an adult reflecting back, I always wondered why I didn\u2019t do more experimental things that pushed boundaries?\u00a0 Why did I hang out on the edge of the popular party group and never was tempted to go to the party?\u00a0 I ask this, because I think knowing myself as I do now, I would\u2019ve.\u00a0 So the only answer I can come up with is somehow my parents instilled so much respect in them that I didn\u2019t want to lost that respect in them or them for me.\u00a0 I am the oldest daughter of a pastor.\u00a0 My dad was a pastor\u2019s kid as well and from what I heard, he definitely fit the \u201cwild pastor kid\u201d title.\u00a0 I remember resenting my dad\u2019s occupation as much as I respected him.\u00a0 There were other kids in my church who got caught at parties and watching the parents broken talking to my dad was heartbreaking, shaming, etc.?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t want my parents judged the way these other parents felt judged and shamed by their child\u2019s actions.<\/p>\n
What I was left with is MTV and music.\u00a0 My dad \u201cprogrammed\u201d MTV off of the channels (as if I didn\u2019t know how to type the number 3 and 0!\u00a0 I still remember what channel it was.\u00a0 Madonna was and is my girl.\u00a0 She was fascinating and interesting and rebellious, everything I considered cool.\u00a0 In Vincent Millers Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture,<\/em> he notes that Madonna while talking about religion by quoting David Lyon who said \u201cReligions that lend themselves to visual intensity and symbolism have greater appeal in consumer culture\u201d, \u201cMuch has been written concerning the religious vision and gender politics of Madonna videos\u201d.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Miller goes on to bring up her video \u201clike a prayer\u201d and I remember this video and watching it over and over trying to sort out in my young Christian mind if I should like this song.\u00a0 The song she sang, however, that spoke to me was \u201cPapa don\u2019t Preach\u201d of course.\u00a0 Madonna had a very complicated relationship with the church and her childhood and utilized music to \u201cexpress yourself\u201d I mean herself.\u00a0 Madonna was trying to utilize her pain, her past, her platform to affect change, to bring female empowerment and at the same time disrespected ritual while still trying to speak truth back into the marginalization of women in the church.<\/p>\n Jason Clark notes \u201cOur liturgies are the rituals that form identity around visions of the good life, and those \u2018story-laden\u2019 practices are \u201cabsorbed into our imagination,\u201d such that:\u201d quoting James K. A. Smith\u2019s \u201cDefined by Our Loves: A Liturgical Anthropology\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n Liturgies are compressed, repeated, performed narratives that, over time, conscript us into the story they \u201ctell\u201d by showing, by performing. Such orientating narratives are not explicitly \u201ctold\u201d in a \u201conce-upon-a-time\u201d discursive mode \u2013 as if the body politic invites us to passively sit at the proverbial librarian\u2019s feet for \u201cstory time\u201d while she walks us through a picture-book narration. No, these stories are more like dramas that are enacted and performed.<\/p>\n Clark very eloquently states how rituals inform us by stimulating the imagination.\u00a0 I guess some question all of this leaves me with, as I continue to wrestle through what I feel the author is trying to express in how our consumeristic culture has \u201cchanged\u201d the way religion is understood.\u00a0 I guess I struggle a little with this, as not all of religion has it right.\u00a0 Many, many have been oppressed and abused for the sake of how ritual and religion is understood.\u00a0 My question is \u201cis all consumerism bad for religion?\u201d.\u00a0 Having more women theologians write and study theology has changed how we understand religion, doesn\u2019t Madonna, though provocative, move this forward a bit faster?\u00a0 I think Austin Kleon says it best \u201cYou are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose (\u201cconsume\u201d?) to let in your life. You are the sum of your influences.\u00a0 The German writer Goethe said, \u201cWe are shaped and fashioned by what we love.\u201d.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Consuming seems to be inevitable, we just have to be discerning of what we consume, ya?<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Miller, Vincent J. \u201cConsuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture\u201d (New York, Bloombury, 2003). 7<\/p>\n