{"id":1771,"date":"2010-11-24T15:24:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T20:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/?p=1771"},"modified":"2010-11-24T15:24:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T20:24:00","slug":"during-advent-lets-see-the-market-for-what-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/during-advent-lets-see-the-market-for-what-it-is\/","title":{"rendered":"During Advent, let\u2019s see The Market for what it is"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, the first Sunday of Advent: it\u2019s a busy week.<\/p>\n

At Thanksgiving, we celebrate our national creation myth. The sacred festival of Black Friday kicks off the high season of commerce and consumerism\u2014unless you\u2019re a devotee of its alternative celebration, Buy Nothing Day.<\/p>\n

The first Sunday of Advent invites us to prepare ourselves to receive Christ through four weeks of quiet reflection, prayer and meditation. Too bad so many of us are going to ignore the invitation and simply squeeze an Advent candle and a verse of \u201cO Come O Come Emanuel\u201d into this season\u2019s commercial demands.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to suggest an Advent discipline for us: noticing, as we participate in \u201cthe holidays,\u201d all the ways in which act as if the world\u2019s real god is not God but The Market. And all the ways in which we <\/em>serve that Market, consciously or unconsciously.<\/p>\n

These ideas are drawn from a powerful essay written by theologian Harvey Cox in 1999 called \u201cThe Market as God.\u201d (For the whole article, click here<\/a>)<\/p>\n

While we have always had markets and bazaars and trading posts, says Cox, \u201cThe Market was never God, because there were other centers of value and meaning.\u201d But today The Market is \u201cthe Supreme Deity, the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like God, The Market is omnipotent<\/em> in its ability to commodify creation. It\u2019s the reverse of transubstantiation. Instead of making ordinary bread and wine into vehicles of the holy, The Market, says Cox, \u201cthings that have been held sacred transmute into interchangeable items for sale.\u201d Like land, or human body parts, or our labor.<\/p>\n

We believe The Market has \u201ca comprehensive wisdom that in the past only the gods have known.\u201d Omniscient<\/em>, it determines our needs, our worth, our pay, the cost of everything. Through reports from Wall Street, we seek to know whether \u201cThe Market is \u2018apprehensive,\u2019 \u2018relieved,\u2019 \u2018nervous,\u2019 or even at times \u2018jubilant\u2019\u201d and respond by buying or selling. And like the God “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid,” The Market seeks to know us in order to convert our hopes and fears, gifts and weaknesses into products and services for sale.<\/p>\n

When it succeeds in knowing us, The Market becomes omnipresent<\/em>, making decisions in areas of life that used to be personal, like child rearing, or marriage, or dating. It respects no limits. In religion, \u201cThe Creator appoints human beings as stewards and gardeners but, as it were, retains title to the earth,\u201d says Cox. The Market says that the earth belongs to people with money who can buy anything they choose. \u201cIn the chapel of The Market\u2026the First Commandment is \u2018There is never <\/em>enough.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Market is omnipotent<\/em>, too. Governments that seek to establish policies that contradict it are punished by The Market\u2019s global priests.<\/p>\n

Cox\u2019s conclusion: for \u201call the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion.\u201d Too many religious practitioners, says Cox, are \u201ccontent to become its acolytes or to be absorbed into its pantheon, much as the old Nordic deities, after putting up a game fight, eventually settled for a diminished but secure status as Christian saints.\u201d<\/p>\n

Depressing, isn\u2019t it. But spending Advent observing how we participate in\u2014and through our actions, worship\u2014The Market may help us name it. If we recognize The Market as a competing God, we can more clearly articulate what Christ and Christianity’s non-market God offer us. If we can grasp that gift, perhaps we can respond to it by more resolutely embodying, in our lives, Christ\u2019s values instead of the Market\u2019s values.<\/p>\n

If we go on being unconscious about The Market, we\u2019ll give lip service to the idea that we’re all children of God while we treat one another and our planet as commodities with price tags.<\/p>\n

Starting today, notice the Market. And see what happens next.<\/p>\n

Anne Basye, Sustaining Simplicity <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanksgiving, Black Friday, the first Sunday of Advent: it\u2019s a busy week. At Thanksgiving, we celebrate our national creation myth. The sacred festival of Black Friday kicks off the high season of commerce and consumerism\u2014unless you\u2019re a devotee of its alternative celebration, Buy Nothing Day. The first Sunday of Advent invites us to prepare ourselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[109,233,108,54],"class_list":["post-1771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post","tag-consumption","tag-economics","tag-lifestyle-stewardship","tag-social-justice"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDuring Advent, let\u2019s see The Market for what it is - ELCA World Hunger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/during-advent-lets-see-the-market-for-what-it-is\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"During Advent, let\u2019s see The Market for what it is - ELCA World Hunger\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Thanksgiving, Black Friday, the first Sunday of Advent: it\u2019s a busy week. 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