Consumerism as Religion
7 Sep 2006
The Real Religion of Our Culture
In my current research I am exploring if media consumer culture functions in a way analogous to a religion and religious reality, that there is a largely unconscious strategy and tactic with spiritual disciplines to this ‘religion’, and what are the implications of this for Christianity’s notion of conversion and formation, and the churches understanding of engagement with culture.
In other words most people aren’t agnostics waiting for the church to bring relevant missional engagement to them, but are deeply religious, with spiritual formation practices, of a consumer religion, that in itself is capable of consuming and using the best missional efforts of the church.
Hatch Match and Dispatch
For example, in the UK less than 7% of the population have a connection to a local church community, and that figure includes easter and christmas. In most towns and cities, the figure will be under 3% of people, and in many large urban areas is heading towards 1-2% of population (and for those of you from the USA, this decline is one of major differences from the UK)
But this isn’t because people are becoming less religious and are longing to embrace new forms of spirituality outside the organised church (although I do think the church has a lot to answer for in this decline). Christians tired of church are embracing christianity outside the organised church, but are not seeing non christians come to faith in these new post-church contexts in significant numbers. I think because people are getting on with their real religion, and daily spiritual practices.
Against the decline in interest in Christianity, we see the increase in the UK in children being baptized, growing above 20% of the population. Whilst Marriage is in decline, the desire for marriage to take place at church is increasing, and the ultimate statistic is for funerals, with 97% of them taking place with Christian content and worship!
This might have be seen as civil religion, cultural markers for people who are irreligious, but I think something else is going on. The religion of consumer media culture is able to take the best the church offers, and consume it and still not engage in following Jesus, handing over our lives to His mission.
And we can consume church so expertly that we use it for showing off our children, partners and use it when we die. We have no interest in the church for it’s mission, and beliefs, but consume it as insurance incase their is something religious.
If I wanted to market to this trend and make money, I would offer the ultimate Christening and Wedding and Funeral packages, and charge for it. Indeed some churches rely on most of the income from these events.
So my question for you today. Should we reject this consuming of church (if it is such), or embrace it as a place to connect.
1. Stand Against Religious Consumption
For example in my 20 years as a christian I have had pastors as friends who advised me to not do weddings and funerals for non christians, that if they live a life away from God, why should the church offer them something that is for Christians those who follow christ.
I have some sympathy for this notion. If people spend a life given over to a life removed from Jesus and his Church, why support people’s consumption of religion. Would it be a wake up call of all churches tomorrow said, enough! I’m sure what would happen is some one would step in with a marketing programme and offer christian funerals and christenings and make billions of pounds.
2. See it as Connection
Or we make sure the church is still there, people deserve grace and the ministry of the church, and even if it is when they die, we are there to match, hatch and despatch and it is part of or mission to do so.
3. Transformation
Or do we do something else? Do we challenge and engage. Do we use the desire for christenings and marriages and funerals, to step in and say we are here, but we need to talk about what this means. Can we use these times as missional doorways to engage deliberately with people. I don’t mean in a heavy handed fire and brimstone gospel message at people’s funerals (but maybe we do need more of that).
In our church I have married non christians, and got a reputation for ‘doing a great funeral’. I worry that I might be being consumed, might be being complicit in the consumption of religion. Yet when I meet with families talk about loved ones, try to put memories and the narrative of people’s lives in the context of God, and offer grace and pray with them, I have seen signs that hearts are opened, and people see that christianity is more than just something for that event and time. And if the church does not bring Jesus to those open doorways, what hope is their for mission at all?
What do you think?
Tagged: Church, Consumerism, Culture, Key-Posts, Religion, Theology
15 comments
Trackback
Comment by billy
7.59 am on 7 Sep 2006
I look forward to seeing where your research takes you. I wonder with you about the spiritual disciplines of consumner culture. (Here in Santa Barbara Ca., we begin with a morning devotional of spending $7 on coffee and a scone or muffin at Starbucks or some other coffee place).
There are two parts of your post that are of interest to me. The first is how our consumnerism functions as religion in its own right. The second is the commodification of religious services offered by the church to a consumneristic culture. Both are fascinating.
As far as how to respond to the “consumption of church,” I wrestle as you do. However, in the U.S., fewer weddings take place in churches and many people perform them (not just ministers). Here in S.B. the weather is often nice and weddings often occur in outdoor venues, a park, a beach etc. The same is true for funerals. We have many funeral homes where services are held that may or may not have any particular religious content. In other words, there is really very little “church consumption” by folks outside the life of the church so it seems to be less of an issue here. I suppose that a unique exception here might be the rise of “day care centers” or “preschools.” There seems to be an increasing demand for childcare for working parents and many churches here have licenced day care centers. Sometimes, these become vital to the financial viability of the church. I spoke with a pastor accross town who told me that more people have begun attending church through their childrens involvement with their day care program than any other program they have ever run.
Comment by Paul
8.37 am on 7 Sep 2006
I think that there has been an effort by christians to come out and offer an apologetic for church, something that is culturally relevant, but we have adopted the attitude of our consuermer society as well, come to us, try us out, see if we can’t change your mind. Does that model really work unless you are a spiritual shopper and even then it becomes a difficult ethos to translate that come and consume mentality into a ok now come and serve…
Does that mean that we now need a better aplogetic for being a christian? Rather than consuming and inviting people to consume with do we have to instead explain what is a christian marriage ceremony – maybe get some people who have been married 10, 20, 30, 40 yrs to talk to the couple about how their faith has made a difference – the same with hatches and dispatches… I attended my grandfather’s funeral recently, it was a humanist ceremony and it all it basically said was heh you had a good life, goodbye – it just felt empty beyond words..
So I think as apart our apolegetic we shouldn’t stop doing hatches/matches & dispatches but explain/engage/challenge what these actually are about…
Oh and i think you are a kind caring people pastoral person – which i am sure is a reflection of you doing a great funeral comes from!
Comment by Stephen Kingston
9.35 am on 7 Sep 2006
Thanks for this post. Some thoughts:
You ask whether consumer culture is a religion. Whilst it certainly takes the place of a religion in many ways, I wonder whether an internalised culture with no specific organising structure can really be called a religion. You may be aware that this discussion of what forms a religion has led some to postulate that only the mono-theistic religions are “religion”.
That definition is too narrow in my mind (and in the minds of most others I think), but I don’t buy the line that one can really have a religion without a concept of deity as well as religious practice/custom.
I think consumerism is an internalised cultural assumption of Western societies. It is dangerous in many ways, and not particularly noticed. It fills a spiritual need with materialism, but it is not – I think – a religion.
You ask essentially how the Church should respond to consumer culture. The question of baptisms, weddings and funerals is interesting. Certainly in the first case, I happen to think that the whole idea of baptising babies is wrong – but if a case is made for infant baptism it can only be made for children of believing parents, so I don’t think that should be offered to children of non-believers.
But the response of the church to consumerism should go much further. We need to challenge the cultural assumption of materialism; the over consumption, the disposable and faddy society. We should point out that historical Christianity is at odds with this, and that ascetisism is not just something for middle ages monastic orders, but is a calling in the Christian life.
To borrow someone else’s joke: there should be an announcement in each Church service – “Would the person with the convertible in the car park please… go and sell it and give the money to the poor”.
Perhaps a key reason people are turned off what is presented as classical Christianity is because it doesn’t actually offer them anything different than the world offers (as I think you are saying). Inasmuch as this is so, we are failing God.
Comment by marc
12.32 pm on 7 Sep 2006
I think if people want funerals, marriage & christening then it is vital they understand and believe what they are doing and why?
Part of the consumption is that it’s too easy and requires little if any effort, some chuches are like the MacDonalds of the Christian world, “i’ll have one of them, one of that and a drink with that’”, but that in turn may be down to some of the books that appear in our christain bookshops.
Certainly here in the UK, the most prolific chain of christian bookshops has shelves devoted to self help books, know ‘God in six easy steps’ or ‘pray this way God will hear you’ etc – do this and you will get this, this in my mind makes people think they can buy God by a few simple actions…It is the consumerism of Christ. What happened to theology?
However many traditional churches also do pre-marriage and pre-baptismn so people are aware that commitment is required, this could be a good example for us.
and yese we should always be there for everyone as Gods example as he is for us, but not just as a convenience and this is the difference.
We need people to understand that they are steeping into a different world and with that a different ways of doing things and it’s in these differences that I believe we can engage.
Comment by Graham Stacey
3.10 pm on 7 Sep 2006
Good questions to be asking…
If you don’t mind here are some of my thoughts.
1. Consumerism is no doubt a significant aspect of our culture, although it does depend on how you define this. However, regardless of how you do define it, the more interesting question is what is driving the consumerist habits?
My pastoral experience tells me that scratch the surface a little and most people today are actually just searching for something genuine. The idea of filling the indescribable hole with ‘material’ has long lost its credibility and is now just an accepted illusion. The satisfaction promised by materialism seems to fade proportionally as fast as it anticipation, and despite chasing it most accept that it is futile. The issue is that it is still the major currency in our culture and with out it we have very little idea of how to exist.
Consumerism appears to be part of a symbiosis of capitalism and individualism, both of which in turn need each other in order to work. Out of these it appears to me that individualism is in the driving seat. The interesting question then becomes what is individualism and how does Christian mission engage with that?
2. Concerning Marriage and Funerals my question is at what stage did these become a gospel issue? People want to marry, commit themselves to each other, for some time at least, why wouldn’t the church want to bless this creation based relationship whether the persons involved believed in Jesus or not. Given that most people wouldn’t step foot in a church any other time and even then will probably need a drink or two to encourage the required level of bravery. Coming to ask to get married in church is in itself an act of looking for the genuine, like in fact any other consumeristic behaviour. For us as the church it becomes a chance to demonstrate the ‘genuine’ as they encounter the living God in his living community of disciples. At least that is the theory.
Funerals are a similar in this respect. Except I think that in this case the bereaved family are often just swept along the way by the whole funeral process.
Baptisms in the more formal sense are of course a Gospel issue since you are meant to be declaring your desire to join a particular community, that of the new Adam. To be honest, most non-church families I have encountered preferred to go for a thanks giving type of service because they had a level of integrity to recognise that they weren’t members of the church community and so baptism thus explained seemed an unreasonable request.
I guess I go for the line that says when someone steps close to the church the Kingdom of God has come close to them and our task is to handle that wisely and graciously as Jesus did so for those who stepped close to him.
I look forward to seeing how these thoughts and this research develops.
Comment by dh
3.27 pm on 7 Sep 2006
I see what you are saying and I agree with what you say about the problems in culture but I see the problem being not with consumerism but with the culture being agnostic or relativistic. “As long as you have faith (notice little “f”) in something that is all that matters.” That seems to be agnostic to me. On thesurface it may appear something different by focusing on the “strong faith (little “f”)” part but when you dig deeper it is actually agnostic. IMHO
Comment by dh
3.28 pm on 7 Sep 2006
I see what you are saying and I agree with what you say about the problems in culture but I see the problem being not with consumerism but with the culture being agnostic or relativistic. “As long as you have faith (notice little “f”) in something that is all that matters.” That seems to be agnostic to me. On thesurface it may appear something different by focusing on the “strong faith (little “f”)” part but when you dig deeper it is actually agnostic. IMHO
Comment by Helen
6.10 pm on 7 Sep 2006
Jason wrote: Can we use these times as missional doorways to engage deliberately with people. I don’t mean in a heavy handed fire and brimstone gospel message at people’s funerals (but maybe we do need more of that).
Jason, did you just say that maybe we should do more fire and brimstone preaching at the funerals of people who aren’t Christians?
So…you’re speaking at uncle Billy’s funeral and you say “He’s in hell and you’re headed there too unless you repent…”?
I’ve read some very angry comments from people who aren’t [evangelical] Christians, about ministers who did that at funerals they’ve been at – especially when they know that if the person being buried could hear what was being said at his funeral, he’d be very displeased about it.
Comment by dh
6.30 pm on 7 Sep 2006
I think Jason is onto something. Helen, though, I don’t think Jason would ever say ““He’s in hell and you’re headed there too unless you repent…†but I do think a lovingly mention of the afterlife and for those who are attending the funeral the importance to desire to be with Christ in this life andthe life to come is reasonable. Just because “hellfire and brimestone” messages are said with wrong attitudes doesn’t mean it isn’t appropriate at certain times. I would that since people are asking questions and wanting answers that when Paul says “Be ready to give an answer of the hope of your calling.” seems reasonable. Way to go Jase but I think you and I would agree that Helen may have misunderstood what you and I are trying to get at. :)
Comment by Jason
6.39 pm on 7 Sep 2006
Helen (8): Oh dear my british humor, we tend towards irony and being sardonic, hence the bit in parenthesis…of course I don’t engage in hell fire preaching at funerals :-)
Comment by Jason
6.40 pm on 7 Sep 2006
Helen (8): and if you read http://www.jasonclark.ws/jasonclark/2004/03/funeral_evangel.html you’ll see what funerals look like in our community :-)
Comment by Helen
7.30 pm on 7 Sep 2006
Jason – I guess I’ve been away too long ;-). (I’ve started watching the UK version of The Office so perhaps that will ‘restore’ my British sense of humor again)
Anyway, if you were kidding then fair enough!
I’ll look at the link you gave me.
dh my point to Jason was that when ministers do what you suggest, even lovingly, it makes people really angry. I don’t think making people angry like that opens them up to the possibility that what is being said is true. So I see it as counter-productive.
Comment by dh
7.58 pm on 7 Sep 2006
How I received Christ it “didn’t make me angry”. I know many people whose lives were changed who didn’t “get angry”. However, I do get your point. We must be the “salt of the earth” or like Paul says in context “…seasoned with salt..” We are on the same page but I see people not understanding the details or not believing the details when they are so important for the Kingdom. It is a balance and you and Jase show that very well. :)
Comment by Paul
7.21 am on 8 Sep 2006
David Brent, changes the career and becomes a (well guess CoE) vicar… could call it The Parish – i’d love to see his take on a baptism/wedding/funeral – am sure it would be toe curlingly funny! :)
Comment by fernando
11.57 am on 8 Sep 2006
I’m really sympathetic to the idea of seeing consumer society as a form of “religion” in an abstract sense. The danger is, however, that we can fail to see the culture on it’s own terms and instead just impose religious categories on it (maybe because *we* are so used to seeing the world that way). I think we see this in the weaker examples of radical orthodoxy.
I like your idea of transformation at those points of consumption of “church.” Sure there is a massive failure to make the message relevant to ordinary life evident here, but it still remains that people seek something that really transcends the everyday consumer society and these big life and death moments – some stamp of eternity.
Comments are now closed.