Recently I heard Ken Myers interview Vincent Miller regarding his new book Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. The interview was outstanding. And dealt with, how the commodification of everything affects our sense of religious faith and practice and on how we can resist.
It goes almost without saying that in a consumer culture we consume. What we we consume are commodities. But commodities are not just things. Miller says that in a consumer culture commodities are things see abstraction from their context. Commodities are “things seen a certain way.” After all everyone throughout history has had to consume to survive, its how we see what we consume that makes our expedience unique in human development.
The things we consume are pulled out of their contexts. And pulling things out of their contexts, (where they come from, what they were used for, who made them, why they were made in the way they were, etc) renders those things as ornaments. It used to be in the not too distant past that humans knew the narratives associated with the things they consumed. Even if they did not grow or hunt for the food they consumed they likely knew the person who did.
Miller used the example of bananas. Today we walk into a grocery store, and if we even notice bananas we look to see if the look good or bad, and what they cost. Hardly a thought regarding how they were grown and by whom, to impact of the growth/harvesting/export of bananas on the communities which produce them, let alone how the bananas got to the store. Bananas become context-less produce for our consumption. The only question is do I want a banana.
Miller’s point is not to get us thinking about bananas, rather his concern is that we are commodifing everything.
Theology and worship practices for instance, are increasingly a “pick and choose” smörgåsbord. It doesn’t matter the context in which a doctrine was born, or a worship practice emerged, the only question is, do I like it?
I find it ironic that in this post-critical, postmodern era where context is so important that we also devalue context at the same time. I wonder if it would be wise for us to revisit Bernard Lonergan’s “universal viewpoint.”
Peace, dwight
