OrganicJesus.org

"Consumerism" is a blanket term describing a social ideology in which individual identity is constructed through the purchase of goods and services. This ideology has a death grip upon America, and many heads in the church nod with approval. With parking lots full of SUVs and plasma screens dotting our narthexes, this one's hard to deny.

But I'm part of the problem.

I’ll admit it – I spend a lot of time whining about what’s wrong with church these days, often cynically filing everything I don’t like under the catch-all of “20th Century American Evangelicalism." Also, a lot of my ideas for where the church needs to go are based on my critiques of the crass contours of how many Americans express the Christian faith today. I limit my reimagining to a response.

OrganicJesus.org is about exploring the richness and depth of the historic, orthodox Christian faith in light of present and approaching realities.

We're here to educate, encourage, and frustrate 21st century Christ-followers to understand the depth and beauty of the Gospel. But we absolutely need you.

As a huge fan of rhetoric as an art form, I value beautiful, articulate speech. Words really do it for me, and there is nothing better than a finely-crafted rant. On my bookshelf is a compilation called "The Malcontents." It contains roughly five hundred pages of bitter satire and grassroots stump speeches defending freedom and liberty dating back centuries.

[This is an extended bit of my speech given at Saturday's Faith and American Values Summit. I'll follow up later this week with part two, which attempts to build a theology to buttress the directions of this article... --BDR]

As many of you know, I work for an environmental-Christian non-profit. Our goal is to foster a cultural shift in American Christianity by making it culturally and theologically safe to love, serve, and protect God’s creation.

In our work, we find that some Christians affirm that creation-care matters biblically, but say it cannot be second to mission and evangelism, or are afraid to take it to the political step because of preexisting political allegiances. We try to correct both of these positions.

[On Monday I talked about the next generation of evangelical Christians becoming increasingly "politically ambidextrous." This is underscored, but not contingent on, some bigger re-evaluations of the faith. Please bear with me as I submit some of my own theological musings to bring into clarity what shift is really going on in the Emergent Church movement. Some of this is what the Emergent Church is waking up to, and as someone in that movement, it’s particularly what I am waking up to. For more on what I’m talking about, I’ll now point you toward the writings of N.T. Wright, Brian McLaren, Shane’s book, and the online community at www.opensourcetheology.net. -- BDR]

This generation is reconsidering what the gospel is, exactly, and from there, how we “do” the gospel or “be the church”. The consensus has been growing for many years now in theological circles that the gospel isn’t only “how to get into heaven after you die,” but more prominently how to share little bits of heaven here on Earth before you die. To put it in the vernacular of the Lord ’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” So we’re realizing that the gospel of Jesus is that the kingdom or reign of God is at hand, among you, among us. For those who have been raised to believe that “the gospel” or “evangelizing” is all about fire insurance, preventing people from going to hell, this is a pretty radical shift. The gospel suddenly becomes much, much, much bigger. It’s now also about getting hell the hell out of God’s Earth.

On Thursday, Rev. David Williams noted that Christianity has become a target demographic for advertisers, pointing the finger at FoxFaith.com.

So, I took a look at FoxFaith...and frankly, I'm disappointed. Seriously, go there. And see how shallow Christian consumerism has become.

I mentioned earlier that I work in graphic design and dabble in the shady world that is advertising. Companies market what sells...and if something doesn't sell or an ad campaign brings in a poor return, it gets pulled. Sometimes things get messy.

Anybody remember that racist Sony ad from this summer?

So here's what troubles me:

Many Christians are responding positively to corporate media's demand that we identify ourselves according to the goods that we consume.

But I see hope.

Our thanks go out to Mark Berry who blogs prolifically and profoundly over at "Way Out West." There's a lot of great stuff on the site, including some excellent meditations (my favorite: Dreams) and fresh content about three times a day.

Have a look!

Shane Claiborne tells a lot of great stories in his book, The Irresistible Revolution. One of my particular favorites involves him attending to the needs of a man afflicted with leprosy in Calcutta, India.

During his time serving those marginalized in a region already ravaged by poverty and sickness, the two grew very close. One day, Shane's friend looked him in the eyes and said simply, "Namaste" ("nah-mah-stay").

"Namaste."

We don't have a word like it in the English language, and I suspect that this may be the cause of much of our hardship.

Roughly translated, it means "I honor the Holy One who lives in you."

Whenever I feel like whining about how the world works, there's a temptation for me to go to one extreme and wholly villify something like, say, "The Market", or else for my readers to likewise perceive me as doing such. Alternately, there is a temptation I also find to over-glorify some element of culture, such as "The Family" or "Government" as something worth defending even to the point of being nasty about it.

Really, these things are neither wholly good nor wholly bad.

As I mentioned yesterday, "government" falls into the category of the fallen structures (Principalities & Powers) which God instituted, maintains, and says are intended for our good. I've never been a big fan of government, first approaching it in my extremely Republican years with frustration and cynicism. I decended into the depths of libertarianism and was so adamently against government intervention in nearly anything (I thought taxation was always theft, and thus wrong), so as to be completely ridiculous and I think out of line with the Holy Scriptures.

Lately, though, I've come to see that government does serve some purposes in society and although often very very naughty and responsible for some of history's most epic tragedies (including killing God on a cross, some while back, though that didn't last too long). But before I delve into the "honoring and confronting" bit of this article, I'll be a good little evangelical and see what the Bible has to say about Government.

There is no target more fun for evangelicals of my generation to take potshots at than Organized Religion. We're sick of it, and yet our love for Christ and community keeps us in a local congregation.

And to be sure, Organized Religion is nothing new to me. I was raised attending charismatic churches of moderate size, until in third grade I attended a mega-church of several thousand. I won't exhaustively catalogue its shortcomings, except summarily that I was not well nourished there, and left it in 2002 nearly undiscipled in the Way of Jesus.

So now I float around in youthful angst, wondering where the Way became the Church, when God's people became God's sheeple. And what in the world am I doing at a bloody evangelical seminary?!

Yet I cannot escape that we know that our God has instituted Organized Religion, that it could be counted among the Principalities & Powers, and that though even God tires of it, He has instituted some formality and organization to his Saints. But what should or could that look like?