Christianity and consumerism

This week I visited the Christian Resources Exhibition (CRE) for the first time in a few years. It is an odd experience as, while, practically, a very useful opportunity to see a wide range of suppliers and products, it makes transparent the extent to which Christianity is immersed in capitalism at the same time that this reality is resolutely ignored.

The exhibition features well over 300 suppliers each with a product to sell yet this is not written about or spoken of as a commercial event instead it is described as an exhibition providing everything needed to resource, equip and empower the Church. In this way, the commercial nature of the event is disguised by the use of spiritual language to describe what occurs.

CRE also provides "practical and resourcing seminars" and workshops, together with opportunities to "enjoy the very best in Christian theatre and music" but again each are provided by those who have products to sell in the main exhibition. Unless you are willing to separate the presentations and performances from the product placement, this produces some odd disjunctions. So, Stuart Townend began leading worship by saying that this was time out from viewing cassocks to worship God. Yet, if worship is holistic, then viewing cassocks is as much worship as is singing songs, as, perhaps, is selling product which was, after all, among the reasons Townend was there as his most recent album was being heavily promoted in the main exhibition with a huge advert on the Kingsway stand featuring his face.

This is not intended as an attack on CRE or Townend (we'll be singing at least one of his songs tomorrow at St John's Seven Kings) but simply as an observation that we tend not, as a Church, to actively acknowledge the extent to which we imitate the consumerist Capitalist culture of which we are part. Now I would fully acknowledge that I am as complicit in this as the next person having chosen to work within existing structures and needing many of the suppliers and products at CRE in order to do mission and ministry at St John's Seven Kings. My main complaint is that we don't honestly acknowledge the reality of what we are doing but instead dress it up in spiritual language and, in fact, seem to need to do this in order to sell the products which we are promoting.

There are several implications. First, that we cannot truly provide an alternative to consumerism when we are so enmeshed in it ourselves. Second, that much of what we then promote is safe, rather than radical, at least in part because that is what sells. It was interesting to note that none of the groups involved in emerging church appeared to be represented at CRE and that those who are seen as representatives for that movement, which seeks to work at least to some extent outside of mainstream Christian structures and culture, were not being heavily promoted by those who were there at CRE. Having said that such groups are still implicated usually having their own product to sell albeit via other channels.

Can we escape the dilemma? Possibly not, or not fully, being part of a consumerist culture but the debate about the extent to which we may or may not cannot really start until we honestly acknowledge that the extent to which we participate in consumerism.

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The Jam - In The Crowd.