At Culture11, which is smokin' today, Daniel Koffler says that whatever scapegoat you choose to blame the economic crisis on, the fact is that our consumerist culture makes us all complicit. Even if we pull out of this mess, we have got to face that we cannot continue to live as we do, or we'll find ourselves right back here again. Excerpt:
These deficiencies are symptomatic of a trend that pervades every level of our economy stretching back thirty years. Consider the US personal savings rate, which spiked as part of the boom after World War II, stabilized and plateaued near all-time highs in the 60s and 70s, then plummeted from 1980 onwards until 2005 when it crossed over into negative numbers for the first time since the Great Depression. This alone suggests a near total erosion of our concepts of personal responsibility, accountability, and self-sufficiency.And the savings rate is projected to sink even farther, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. There was a time when Americans lived within their means and put money away in the bank. Today, we haven't just lost our capacity for limiting purchases to what we can afford: we're getting worse and worse at saving with every year that goes by! A close analysis of these trends in the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review shows that the decline in savings can't be fully explained without reference to Americans buying more and more things that they don't need, and that we have saved less and less as the wealth of the nation has increased. Perhaps most shocking of all, the steepest drops in the savings rate have coincided with the highest spikes in the proportion of our income from capital gains, which is another way of saying that the less actual work we have to do to earn each dollar of our income, the more rapidly our capacity to manage our own finances deteriorates.
The Nightmare on Wall Street is not over yet. Perhaps we'll learn that hard money fanatics, survivalists stockpiling guns and butter, and the remnants of the international communism were right after all. But suppose the status quo holds up, and our financial system averts a complete collapse. Say we're fortunate, and whatever bailout Congress passes turns out to successfully fix broken regulatory mechanisms without creating worse ones in their stead.
There remains the core problem: we are embedded in a culture of wanton consumption for no other purpose than itself. The time we enjoy most consumer goods we purchase is breathtakingly short - and having degenerated into a nation of consumerist appetitive beasts, the American people are incomparably better equipped to blunder our way into a crisis that threatens our economic or political system than we are to solve one.
We are a national emergency waiting to happen unto ourselves.
Read the whole thing. Why aren't our churches talking about this?
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Hmm. I'm of mixed feelings on this topic. I agree that generally progressive/liberal churches preach more often on social justice type issues like giving to the poor but I'm not so sure that translates into an anti-consumerist message.
There are some earnest souls in every congregation (progressive and orthodox) that live this out--that actually do give so much of themselves and their earnings that they do deny themselves luxuries (like nice cars, expensive foods, clothing and travel) that most would consider rightfully earned.
But again, I see plenty of luxury lifestyle hallmarks in progressive congregations as I do on orthodox ones. Not having been in a progressive church for a loooong time, I wonder if you hear often, "Do you really need that eco-friendly laundry deionizer [insert "green" item of choice here] or could you be in solidarity with the poor and buy the cheap laundry powder, giving the rest to X charity?"
Maybe you do hear that message preached--correct me if I'm wrong--but I more often think of progressive churches being aligned with eco-consciousness and agitating for homosexual rights than I do with taking on ascetic Christianity, encouraging frugal lifestyles in order to give more freely to the poor.
The other thing that I want to suggest is that in progressive churches, when you do hear anti-consumerism being preached on, it seems it is usually an outgrowth of being "green" or as a sign of your belief in social and economic justice. In orthodox churches, I would think these might be VERY secondary concerns. The primary reason to be anti-consumerist from an orthodox standpoint would be because it's good for your soul. Detachment from the world and all that. Probably I am over-generalizing--there's the Dalai Lama and Thomas Merton probably in the progressive camp definitely concerned with spiritual growth--but that is my perception.
"Why aren't our churches talking about this?"
You mean conservative churches. Because that would mean they would have to focus on something other than abortion and homosexuality. And they would have to disavow the famous Reagan statement: "it's not materialism, it's Americanism." And in the end, they would have to put principle over politics. Something that most on the Christian Right would not have the humility to do.
You mean conservative churches. Because that would mean they would have to focus on something other than abortion and homosexuality. And they would have to disavow the famous Reagan statement: "it's not materialism, it's Americanism." And in the end, they would have to put principle over politics. Something that most on the Christian Right would not have the humility to do.
I presume you say that with a straight face. Nevertheless, I should point out that in all my churchgoing, I have only two or three times heard abortion mentioned in a sermon (actually I can only think of two, but I'm going to assume there was a third). The only time I heard homosexuality mentioned was on several occasions with this priest in Fort Lauderdale, who harped constantly on the grievous sin that cries out to heaven for vengeance: homophobia. So there.
My experience is similar to Rod's.
It's only ever in "liberal" or ... excuse me ... "progressive" churches that I've ever found it to be the case that the theology is focused on one's "right" to life, liberty and the insertion of scissors into babies' heads and of penises into rectums.
The problem is that preaching frugality and simplicity is not a good business model for churches and other non-profits that rely on donations.
Case in point: I teach at a Mennonite school, which makes a strong point of teaching frugality and simplicity as moral imperatives. These are Mennonite essentials (though they will tend to fail in practice for many in the denomination). We live this by keeping tuition (and faculty salaries) as low as we can, though tuition's higher than it could be because of the problem noted in the next paragraph.
The result seems to be that we have a rather smaller percentage of ueberreich alumni than most schools. Unfortunately this means that we live rather hand-to-mouth here, and it's harder to get funding for needed building projects, lower tuition, and so forth.
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