The May 2005 issue of Harper’s featured a very disturbing feature about the Rev. Ted Haggard, or “Pastor Ted” as he is affectionately and informally named by his congregation. Haggard is the pastor of the 12,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, and the current president of the National Association of Evangelicals. Among the disturbing features in the article was this observation by the author, Jeff Sharlet:

“One of Pastor Ted’s favorite books is Thomas Friedman’s The Lexus and the Olive Tree, which is now required reading for the hundreds of pastors under Ted’s spiritual authority across the country. From Friedman, Pastor Ted says he learned that everything, including spirituality, can be understood as a commodity.”

Well, yes, everything can be understood as a commodity. But far from being a convenient characteristic of modern life, this is a temptation of inadequate analogizing which should be resisted by everyone, and which the Church and its leaders should be warning against rather than glibly and carelessly promoting. If Uncle Screwtape were still advising his trainee in our market-driven society, I’m sure among advice he would give is “Get your patient to see everything in life as a commodity. This will give us a point of leverage by which to advance his sense of his own sovereignty (‘the customer is always right,’ after all) and his feeling that unfashionable ideas and commitments are disposable.”

The devilish disorder promoted in our lives by the assumption that everything can be understood as a commodity is illustrated in a recent column in the San Francisco Chronicle, headlined “Marriage proposal: Why not privatize? Partnerships could be tailored to fit.” The article, written by a lawyer named Colin P. A. Jones, argues at one point: “Exclusivity and the use of choice to define one’s identity are at the core of modern consumer society. Extending this to marriage is only logical.”

It shouldn’t be that hard to see why the commodification of everything is a problem, not an opportunity. (One of our former guests, Vincent Miller, did a marvelous job spelling out many of these problems in his book Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture). But as in many instances, the pursuit of “cultural relevance” is radically different from the pursuit of cultural wisdom.

Related reading and listening

  • Buying and selling holidays, identities, and ourselves — We present four interviews on American consumerism, with Leigh Eric Schmidt, David Lyon, Thomas Frank, and Sam Van Eman. (46 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 166 — FEATURED GUESTS: William Cavanaugh, Kent Burreson, Beth Hoeltke, Jeffrey Barbeau, Jason Baxter, John Betz, and Bruce Herman
  • Money, status, and satisfaction —
    FROM VOL. 44
    David Myers and Robert Frank discuss the tenuous relationship between wealth and happiness. (22 minutes)
  • “Emerging adulthood” —
    FROM VOL. 100
    Christian Smith discusses the aimless cultural world of emerging adulthood and on how it makes the idea of objective moral order implausible. (17 minutes)
  • Teen consumers and influencers —
    FROM VOL. 62
    Alissa Quart explains how advertisers exploit the normal developmental characteristics of preteens and teens in order to sell them products. (12 minutes)
  • Teenage agency —
    FROM VOL. 68
    Murray Milner, Jr., explores how the current structure of schools and education leads almost inevitably to a culture of consumption among teenagers. (19 minutes)
  • Gratitude and stewardship as political postures —
    FROM VOL. 118
    Mark Mitchell explores the consequences of four concepts that are sadly missing from most political debates today: creatureliness, gratitude, human scale, and place. (18 minutes)
  • How advertising detaches us from the world —
    FROM VOL. 13
    Historian and cultural critic Jackson Lears discusses the power of advertising to reinforce and shape cultural attitudes about material goods. (9 minutes)
  • Defined by what we buy —
    FROM VOL. 48
    Gary Cross argues that Americans are uniquely susceptible to the temptation to define ourselves by what we buy. (10 minutes)
  • On Eugenics in America — Christine Rosen explores early eugenics support in the early 1900s and current “participatory evolution” practices. (50 minutes)
  • Humans as biological hardware — In this essay, Brad Littlejohn and Clare Morell decry how modern technology tends to hack the human person in pursuit of profit. (55 minutes)
  • A theology of eating —
    FROM VOL. 113
    Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. (24 minutes)
  • The unintended consequences of the Reformation —
    FROM VOL. 114
    Historian Brad Gregory discusses the unintended consequences of the Reformation, consequences which continue to trouble us. (26 minutes)
  • Infrastructures of addiction — Christopher Lasch on the subversive effects of the expectation of novelty
  • “I buy, therefore I am” — As counterpoint to the spirit of Black Friday, excerpts from the work of sociologist Craig Gay about the secularizing effects of modern economic habits are followed by an interview with Vincent Miller, author of Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. (28 minutes)
  • Our commerce, our selves — Thomas Frank argues that the anti-establishment ethos of the counterculture was not a new phenomenon in the 1960s but was already present in corporate America long before the Beatles showed up. (23 minutes)
  • Don’t feel bad — James Twitchell discusses a few of the themes in his book about the confusing state of the evolution of shame and shamelessness. (20 minutes)
  • Desire desires desire — Zygmunt Bauman on being a consumer in a consumer society
  • Loving your neighbor during a pandemic — Brad Littlejohn reflects on how best to ask and answer some of the questions raised by our current disease-ravaged circumstances, particularly questions related to Christian freedom and love of neighbor. (29 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 100 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jennifer Burns, Christian Smith, Dallas Willard, Peter Kreeft, P. D. James, James Davison Hunter, Paul McHugh, Ted Prescott, Ed Knippers, Martha Bayles, Dominic Aquila, Gilbert Meilaender, Neil Postman, and Alan Jacobs
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 95 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stewart Davenport, William T. Cavanaugh, J. Matthew Bonzo, Michael R. Stevens, Craig Gay, Eugene Peterson, and Barry Hankins
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 78 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Bauerlein, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Sam Van Eman, Thomas de Zengotita, Eugene McCarraher, and John Witte, Jr.
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 69 — FEATURED GUESTS: John McWhorter, Douglas Koopman, Daniel Ritchie, Vincent Miller, and Barrett Fisher
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 68 — FEATURED GUESTS: Murray Milner, Jr., Steven C. Vryhof, Douglas J. Schuurman, Robert Gagnon, Richard Stivers, and Quentin Schultze
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 65 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stephen G. Post, Glenn C. Altschuler, Mark Oppenheimer, Johnny Cash, George Marsden, and Julian Johnson
  • Re-imagining economic obedience: lessons from Wendell Berry — The order of Creation, says Wendell Berry, is closer to that of a drama than that of a market. That quality should inform how we imagine economic life to be well-ordered.
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 62 — FEATURED GUESTS: Craig A. Bernthal, James Turner Johnson, Alissa Quart, Stephen M. Barr, Lilian Calles Barger, and Corby Kummer
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 49 — FEATURED GUESTS: David Lyon, Christopher Wolfe, Patrick Fagan, Joseph Davis, Morris Berman, Frank Burch Brown, Robert K. Johnston, and Ralph C. Wood
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 48 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jon Butler, Gary Cross, Zygmunt Bauman, Pico Iyer, Richard Stivers, Larry Woiwode, Alan Jacobs, and James Trott
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 44 — FEATURED GUESTS: James Davison Hunter, Brian C. Robertson, David Myers, Robert Frank, Gayle Brandow Samuels, Thomas Hine, Thomas Hibbs, and Robin Leaver
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 43 — FEATURED GUESTS: Jedediah Purdy, Lendol Calder, John Nelson, George Arasimowicz, James Calvin Schaap, Frederick Buechner, Kay Hymowitz, and Calvin Stapert
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 40 — FEATURED GUESTS: Joseph Epstein, John Gray, Kenneth R. Craycraft, Jr., William T. Pizzi, Pamela Walker Laird, Albert Borgmann, Neal Stephenson, and Alan Jacobs
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