{"id":4415,"date":"2015-03-18T15:44:50","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T15:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=4415"},"modified":"2015-03-19T13:02:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-19T13:02:49","slug":"the-commodification-of-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-commodification-of-church\/","title":{"rendered":"The commodification of church"},"content":{"rendered":"

I live in a world of religious commodification and it has birthed the fruit of abstraction and ultimately spawned fragmentation. In my world, \u2018community\u2019 has become \u2018community groups\u2019, following Jesus has become \u2018service projects\u2019 and knowing God has become an hour on Sunday. It\u2019s as though some malevolent force said, \u201cLet\u2019s rethink church\u201d that thriving Jesus movement; that living organism – the church; let\u2019s deconstruct it and remake it. Let\u2019s make it more of an organization so we can manipulate it, manage it and, of course, market it; let\u2019s make it less of a living organism, that\u2019s too unmanageable. In Acts 2, we see a simple church with teaching and prayer; fellowship and service. But let\u2019s \u2018rethink church\u2019 anyway.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

America has a culture of consumption; we\u2019ve built our economy around it. The philosophy and principles of our consumer system enter into our everyday thinking and, therefore, show up in our practices and behaviors. Vincent Miller\u2019s book \u201cConsuming Religion: Religious Belief And Practice In A Consumer Culture<\/em><\/span>\u201d is about how religious belief and practice is influenced by consumer capitalism, or said more bluntly, how \u201cconsumer culture transforms religious belief.\u201d[2]<\/a> Commodification, for example, is transforming goods, services, as well as, ideas that may not be considered goods into a commodity.[3]<\/a> Miller would argue that commodification is further facilitated by abstraction. Abstraction is \u201cdisentangling religious symbols from their roots in living communities and traditions\u201d[4]<\/a> this effectively makes them less meaningful but easier for the masses to appropriate and consume. Mother Theresa, for example is a great inspiration of Christian service to the world\u2019s poorest people. Her popularity has been exploited into a commodity. Her image gets reproduced en masse on tee shirts worn by young Americans inspired by her life.[5]<\/a> They appeal to her work and denounce \u2018American materialistic lifestyles\u2019 as they drink their Starbucks while listening to music on their iPhones. This may not seem too bad, until we recognize that with Mother Theresa\u2019s commodification also comes the abstraction. These young advocates aren\u2019t necessarily committed to the sacrificial service Mother Theresa actually advanced. Few would live as simply as the poor in India, without clean running water, without air conditioning in the midst of sweltering heat. Few would sacrifice even the convenience of their laundry machines or their lattes, as the sisters of charity do. They like the idea of her sacrificial service, not necessarily the reality of it. These young fans grasp onto an \u2018abstraction\u2019 effectively holding a lie, fragmentation<\/em> occurs, it\u2019s no longer rooted in the biblical tradition of Christ washing his disciples\u2019 feet, giving us an example to follow, nor the recent example of sacrificial service by the sisters of charity.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to think about this! It hits too close to home. For example, our church, like others, promotes \u2018genuine relationships\u2019 as a primary dynamic of what it means to be like Jesus. From a Trinitarian view we see community in the Godhead, we remind folks that Jesus summarizes the entire law in the Great Commandment, which is our relational calling to love God supremely and to love others.[6]<\/a> Yet hasn\u2019t community become a commodity at church? Haven\u2019t we, knowing all-too-well that relationships are important but messy, troublesome and hard to manage; haven\u2019t we created a small group culture where people can select their \u2018community group\u2019 like a product off the shelf? \u201cOh for this go around I\u2019ll pick a group near my house, or a topic that helps me be a better parent<\/em>\u201d. By the way, if for any reason your community group doesn\u2019t work for you, \u201cno worries\u201d just pick another one next time. We\u2019ve made genuine, loving relationship with other brothers and sisters in Christ into a commodity. Because we\u2019ve made it into a product, we\u2019ve added the abstraction<\/em> that these groups are supposed do something for you (consumer satisfaction) and if it\u2019s not what you want \u2013 just buy another. The commodification of community, as well as the abstraction of it into a product designed to \u2018meet your needs\u2019, results in the loss, or the fragmentation, of the very thing we long for in the first place: genuine loving relationships.<\/p>\n

Where do we go from here? The dynamics of commodification are about believing a twist. When it comes to the church, the enemy takes good, God-given desires like \u2018loving relationships\u2019 and \u2018sacrificial service\u2019 and he twists them. He deconstructs the life out of it and offers up a lifeless version for us to busy ourselves with. At least part of the answer has to do with my own brokenness, my own humility. The things of the Lord (like worship, genuine relationships and service) won\u2019t become a commodity for my use or a product to consume if I genuinely believe that neither God nor His people are for my use, my purposes or for my consumption. When they become this, it is nothing less than idolatry.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Acts 2:42-47 (NIV)<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Vincent J. Miller, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture<\/em> (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2005), 15.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> This includes money itself, human beings, and the natural environment, which are not goods or services, let alone commodities. See Karl Polanyi, “The Self-Regulating Market”, page 40 in Economics as a Social Science, 2nd edn, 2004.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Llu\u00eds Oviedo, review of Consuming Religion<\/em>, by Vincent J. Miller, Catholic Book Review<\/em>: 1, accessed March 15, 2015, http:\/\/catholicbooksreview.org\/2004\/miller.htm.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> David Taylor, \u201cReview of Vincent Miller’s *consuming Religion*,\u201d Diary of an Arts Pastor<\/em> (blog), March 27, 2010, accessed March 15, 2015, http:\/\/artspastor.blogspot.com\/2010\/03\/review-of-vincent-millers-consuming.html.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Matt. 22:34-40 (NIV)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I live in a world of religious commodification and it has birthed the fruit of abstraction and ultimately spawned fragmentation. In my world, \u2018community\u2019 has become \u2018community groups\u2019, following Jesus has become \u2018service projects\u2019 and knowing God has become an hour on Sunday. It\u2019s as though some malevolent force said, \u201cLet\u2019s rethink church\u201d that thriving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"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":[370,2,65],"class_list":["post-4415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-commodification","tag-dminlgp","tag-miller-cavanaugh","cohort-lgp5"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415","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\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4415"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4416,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4415\/revisions\/4416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}