consumer culture and faith

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.

3 Replies to “consumer culture and faith”

  1. I bought that book a number of years ago in seminary because I thought it would be an interesting read. I haven’t opened it up yet. I’ll be curious to hear more of your thoughts on it!

  2. that is interesting. I've been thinking about this from the standpoint of certain Bible studies and such. For instance… sherwood pictures puts out a good movie that probably has some great value for couples. But then they come out with love dare, the book. love dare, the journal. love dare, collector's edition. love dare, the one-year devotional guide, the collector's calendar, the collector's cards, etc. etc. etc. Really disappointing. And I don't begrudge anyone making a living with a decent wage and selling some resources that are indeed helpful, but somewhere along the way, it just becomes too much.

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