i’ve started reading “consuming religion” by vincent miller and it is very interesting. miller basically says that modern theology is completely silent on the most important cultural issue of our day – consumerism. this is not a simple “don’t spend money” book but an analysis of a set of values that are competing with CHRISTian faith. it is very interesting thus far though at this point i don’t completely know how to respond to it. miller points out that consumerism doesn’t really debate with ideologies . instead it merely tries to place its practices upon the ideology and thereby wins the battle. for example, all the che’ shirts or pushing advent conspiracy and deciding it is such a good idea that we should start selling advent conspiracy t-shirts, bracelets, etc. or consider the example of kurt cobain, a signer/song writer who sang about the shallowness of pop culture and the system loved him and sold tons of albums for nivarna. consumerism says there’s no need to battle over ideas when it can agree with your ideas and sell more crap. how do you battle something that will simply agree with your ideas and place its practices on your ideas.
like i said, thus far it is very interesting. right now i’m just glad that i got the book from the library rather than having bought it. 🙂
after i finish this im looking forward to starting “consumed” by benjamin barber and “lead us into temptation” by james twitchwell.