Preaching as shamed consumption in a commodified social world: the Aldi bag syndrome
The company website has a helpful questions and answers page. One section used to read, “Why do you have to pay for carrier bags at Aldi?” “There is no such thing as a free carrier bag. Many retailers add this cost into the prices of their products and so you pay for them indirectly. At Aldi the decision to pay for carrier bags is yours.”
According to my teenage daughter, that’s a great relief! Not, I should add, because she is worried about the environmental damage being done by millions of discarded supermarket plastic bags, but because it means that I am very unlikely to ask her to carry an Aldi bag. According to my daughter, being seen with an Aldi bag is shaming, and to be caught with one at school will result in taunts and name-calling. No matter that Aldi is a huge and successful company – 5000 stores worldwide, with hundreds in the UK. No matter that the company’s products regularly receive plaudits by the critics of the food press. No matter indeed that some of those products are my daughter’s preferred taste choice – yes, their blackcurrant cordial is better than the brand leader! The fact, however, remains that she wouldn’t be seen dead carrying an Aldi bag. That is the Aldi bag syndrome.
We who think of ourselves as more mature, all too easily dismiss my daughter’s reaction as the foibles of an over peer-group sensitive adolescent. I suspect there isn’t a person in this room who isn’t susceptible to the pressures the Aldi bag syndrome represents! Economic circumstances mean the star of the bargain retail grocery stores is on the rise but the cachet of the name label hasn’t yet made of them ‘names to be seen with.’
I find Anthony Giddens’ account of the self as a ‘reflexive project’ a convincing analysis of individual identity creation and the social relationships that stem from it in what he calls late modern society. We each of us weave/create our own ongoing autobiographical narrative in a way quite different from the predetermined and predictable life-courses so familiar to even our recent forebears. In this reflexive project the things of commodities and consumption play a prominent role. The place of exchange, the label, the price I pay, the style of the product, the social location of the product, the credibility of the commodity in terms of fashion and ownership – all those factors and more are parts of the social process of shopping and what I as shopper am achieving for myself as I shop. No one in Europe or North America is
outside this consumptive culture.
The sheer power of consumptive culture is one of the reasons why I want to argue that what I have termed the Aldi bag
syndrome is an incredibly forceful metaphor in analyzing preaching in contemporary British society. The discourse of commodity and consumption is so dominant that its tentacles touch every aspect of our lives.
Some definitions are required to keep this argument focussed. I understand a commodity to be an article that is exchanged; bought and sold. Traditionally a commodity has been thought of as something material; a product, an artefact, or a raw material itself, rather than an activity which has more usually been called a service. The commodity/service distinction is, however, increasingly difficult to maintain as commodification literally colonises the rest of life. Think of how many things that once were public services are now commodity exchanges. As consumption as it were runs out of things to consume, activities are reified, made into things, and as commodities can therefore be exchanged. I reserve that word commodification to this process whereby the habits and dispositions we have learned in the consumption of things that are literal commodities spreads into other arenas of human activity. By the term consumer culture I understand that generalised way of life in which commercially organised consumption dominates personal and inter-personal activity. This is in marked contrast to the focus on production of earlier ways of living. In consumer culture, the accumulation of things, and of services and other less tangible activities and behaviours treated as things, is regarded as a principal marker of human well-being. Commodification is perhaps the essential component of consumer culture.
All this is a common enough theme in contemporary cultural studies, but I intend to extend that discussion into the practice of so-called mainstream Christian religion using preaching as the focus. The shopping self, to use that term as a kind of shorthand, is the same self that sits through a sermon week by week. The mental frameworks and categories that
the shopping self uses in commodity discernment, purchase, and deployment and in recreation are applied with like vigour to worship and other aspects of Christian practice. In other words, that Christian activity is not outside (as it were) the dominating consumptive culture, but embedded within it.
Preaching is an aspect of Christian practice that is particularly susceptible to concepts drawn from consumer culture. If only preachers would learn from the techniques of selling, promotion and entertainment, then people would pay attention to them! Let the preacher beguile, amuse, stimulate, delight, entertain, and all in minutes or even seconds because the greatest error of all is to bore. Let, it is said, the preacher learn from the world, and then present the alternative. The analysis I am advocating offers an understanding quite contrary to that location of sermonizing socially. In the context of an intensely commodifying culture I believe that a sharp disjunction between technique and content, between worldly methods and spiritual message, is no longer tenable. It is commonplace within the practice of preaching to draw a
rigid distinction between the values that are attached to consumer/media culture and the values of Christianity. Preaching in this view is essentially a translation process that enables the gospel to be heard within an alien culture. Whatever cultural analysis the preacher undertakes is solely to facilitate the effectiveness of this translation process. Before I go on to say why I don’t think that model works any longer, let me offer some examples of it:
This is Jolyon Mitchell in a much appreciated book examining preaching in the light of the development of radio –
'Preaching then is facing a series of crises, which raise serious challenges
for those seeking to invite their listeners to participate in the Christian story.
First, the preacher is faced with the challenge of speaking to an easily distracted
audience, many of whom are no longer accustomed to listening to a single
speaker for a long period of time. Secondly, when so many other powerful
forms of electronic communication are competing for their listeners' imaginations,
the preacher can understandably lose confidence in preaching as an
effective form of communication. Thirdly, as a communicator probably nurtured
in a literary culture, the preacher needs to face the recent transformations
in orality, such as those exemplified by the evolving discursive practices
employed on television and radio. '
[1990:24]
Jolyon Mitchell, Visually Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of Preaching (Edinburgh, T & T Clarke, 1999)
Notice that the crises in preaching are signified as communication problems. Preaching takes its place amongst the innumerable other activities in our society defined as subject to ‘communication problems.’ As Deborah Cameron has suggested there has in recent generations been a marked shift towards defining all problems, in arenas as diverse as marriage, selling, the academy, health care and others, as communication problems. As Cameron has noted, this is fundamentally a therapeutic model: diagnose the problem, determine a likely solution, and apply the strategy. This is exactly the model Mitchell applies to preaching: understand the visual dominated orality used by radio and TV; diagnose the consequences of that for preaching [loss of social confidence in rhetorical skills, inability to maintain concentration, familiarity with the conversational as against the logically formal, etc]; develop a communication methodology in
preaching that takes account of these things [this means learning new skills]; and apply that methodology.
I probably caricature Mitchell’s position somewhat as he is quite subtle and nuanced in his use of the therapeutic model.
Rogness, a widely cited American Professor and teacher of preaching, is rather more assertive in his usage:
[But] 'people listen and hear differently in this
world of television. When we preachers understand the dynamics of this new
world, then the gospel can ring with new vigour and life in our preaching.'
[1994:10]
He continues,
'While visiting many congregations I am constantly
astonished to hear how much complaining there is about preaching. Faithful
churchgoers find themselves wondering, "What's happened to good preaching?"
"Where have all the good preachers gone?"
Preaching has fallen on hard times.
There are several reasons for this malaise. Some pastors don't work
very hard on their sermons. Some are out of touch with their congregations.
Others are ineffective public speakers. Much preaching is theological fluff.
Another part of the problem is that people in the pews have such a wide range of
expectations from the sermon that it is impossible to satisfy everybody.
Yet the truth is that many pastors work hard at their preaching, but sense it is not
effective, and they cannot put their finger on the reasons why.
A fundamental reason for this situation is that we live in the midst of a massive
communications revolution, which we have only begun to understand. This
revolution inevitably affects the way people listen to sermons, and if we fail
to take this into account in preaching we will not reach our audience.'
[11]
Michael Rogness, Preaching to a TV Generation (Lima, CSS Publishing 1994)
Leaving aside the obvious point about the apparently non-ironic use of the term ‘audience,’ one of the things that strikes me about Rogness is that all his remarks use the concept of effective communication defined precisely in the terms Cameron has highlighted as a skill to be learned. In the passage I read, substitute for the word ‘preaching’ ‘marriage,’ ‘teaching,’ ‘retailing,’ or ‘men’s health’ and it will still make perfect sense! Everything is a communication problem.
This brings me back to the Aldi bag syndrome. In their focus on skills, delivery, effectiveness, and process, both Mitchell and Rogness [and the many others who take a similar line] have unwittingly created preaching as yet another commodity to be developed and consumed. The procedures of presentation and the habits of interpretation familiar in the common-round of life in a consumer culture are applied wholesale to this aspect of religious practice. Traditional ideas of formation and the dynamics of institutional belonging across time are jettisoned in favour of effective communication. In
doing this some of the shaming associated with the consumption of preaching is, like decanting the good purchased from Aldi, obscured, to the relief of the somewhat embarrassed consumers. Whether it be a chat show-like conversational
style, a business presentation-like address with flashy overheads or a point by point explanation like a political pundit, the form follows categories learnt within a consumer world. The familiarity of the forms provides a way towards
legitimising an activity that is otherwise regarded with some suspicion. The word ‘preaching’ is after all widely used in a derogatory way in popular speech, a usage fulsomely acknowledged in the Oxford English Dictionary. The implication
is that any reasonable person would surely have to justify subjecting her or his self to sermons. Commodity categories may provide just such justification.
My argument isn’t that communications skills are unimportant in the process of preaching, nor that sermons don’t need to be effective, but rather that preaching, like other aspects of religion, is subject to the all-embracing power of commodification and consumption. Like Vincent Miller, I believe that consumer culture has transformed, and is transforming, our religious beliefs and practices [2004:31]. The preacher, like everyone else, cannot stand aloof from
that culture and determine from some illusory neutral spot how to subvert it. The reality is that how we ‘avow, interpret, and employ the beliefs, symbols, values, and practices’ [Miller, 2004:31] of our religious traditions has been
radically changed by consumer culture.
In this context, easy talk of counter-cultural messages is probably beside the point. Just as it is all too easy to unwittingly employ strategies born of consumerism in efforts to critique consumerism, and thereby neutralise the critique offered, so also the marketplace is incredibly adept in turning criticism into a marketing ploy. Think of the call for simpler, purer products; or less packaging; or organic foodstuffs; or green environmentally friendly products. All those criticisms and
more have been turned into successful ways of selling yet more products. Consumer culture simply encompasses dissent and uses it for its own purposes. There is no reason to suppose that religious critiques are any less susceptible to this process. Indeed, the reality is that all religious symbols, artefacts and ideas are a rich seam of material mined by commodifiers in a constant search for new products. The album Chant by the Benedictine Monks of Santa Domingo
demonstrates how marketable religion can be. As an aside, it is interesting to observe what amounts to the branding of Rowan Williams, reminiscent in presentation of the things published under Pope John Paul II’s name, and quite
unlike the publications of previous Archbishops of Canterbury. None of this means that Christian theological concepts cannot bring a critical voice to the consumer world, but simply that the processes involved work in more than one
direction. Preaching to be a critique has to do more than just assert itself as such.
Part of the wiliness of commodification is that it de-anchors symbols from their moorings of tradition and exploits them in ways sometimes quite alien to their origin. Colin Morris, for example, points out how TV’s penchant for the
spectacular has tended to remythologise the great religions. He writes,
'They are treated as part of the main flow of a broad naturalistic view of the planet,
its wild life, scenic vistas, exotic architecture and richly diverse human
types. The camera has both rationalised and romanticised the life of the temple,
mosque and shrine.
So Christians in the pew find themselves at the impact
point of a clash of symbolism, trying to reconcile television's highly stylised
version of the world's religions with the response offered by various theologies
of mission, also highly stylised.
I need not labour the point. Not only the Church's understanding of mission
but most aspects of its life suffer the impact of this clash of symbols
offering different explanations of the same reality.
It's a perennial problem for preachers required to mine the raw material of
sermons from whatever vein of experience preoccupies the congregation. For years
they have had to take account of the televisually mediated account of the world.'
[1984:202]
(Colin Morris, God in a Box, (London, Hodder and Stoughton 1984)
Our symbols are no longer our own, if indeed they ever were.
To summarise:
Such is the power of commodification that it is not possible for preachers to employ its advantageous techniques without further spreading the habits of interpretation that go with it. Here the Aldi bag contains the embarrassing old style things of rhetorical authority, lived tradition over time, and learnt response. At the same time beliefs, practices and symbols that
form the framework for the Christian life are abstracted from that life, and commodified for easy consumption. The communal, traditional setting which gave those beliefs, practices and symbols their power to shape human existence is
effectively neutralised. Here the Aldi bag is the logic of religious practice, doctrine, and rules which are dispensed with as overly rigid, restricting and exclusivist. No one wants to be seen carrying doctrines around nowadays! Such is the double bind of preaching in a commodifying culture.
Bibliography:
Cameron, Deborah
2000 Good to Talk? Living and Working in a Communication Culture. London: Sage.
2003 Globalizing Communication in Aitchison, Jean and Lewis, Diana M 2003 New Media Language. London: Routledge.
n/d Good to Talk? The Cultural Politics of ‘Communication.’ Research paper, Institute of Education, University of
London [www.ioe.ac.uk/lie/files/dctalk.html]
Giddens, Anthony
1991 Self Identity and Late Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Miller, Vincent J
2004 Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. New York: Continuum.
Mitchell, Jolyon P
1999 Visually Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of Preaching. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Morris, Colin
1984 God-in-a-Box. Christian Strategy in the Television Age. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
1996 Raising the Dead: The Art of the Preacher as Public Performer. London: Fount.
Rogness, Michael
1994 Preaching to a TV Generation. Lima: CSS Publishing.
Tanner, Kathryn
1997 Theories of Culture. A New Agenda for Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
According to my teenage daughter, that’s a great relief! Not, I should add, because she is worried about the environmental damage being done by millions of discarded supermarket plastic bags, but because it means that I am very unlikely to ask her to carry an Aldi bag. According to my daughter, being seen with an Aldi bag is shaming, and to be caught with one at school will result in taunts and name-calling. No matter that Aldi is a huge and successful company – 5000 stores worldwide, with hundreds in the UK. No matter that the company’s products regularly receive plaudits by the critics of the food press. No matter indeed that some of those products are my daughter’s preferred taste choice – yes, their blackcurrant cordial is better than the brand leader! The fact, however, remains that she wouldn’t be seen dead carrying an Aldi bag. That is the Aldi bag syndrome.
We who think of ourselves as more mature, all too easily dismiss my daughter’s reaction as the foibles of an over peer-group sensitive adolescent. I suspect there isn’t a person in this room who isn’t susceptible to the pressures the Aldi bag syndrome represents! Economic circumstances mean the star of the bargain retail grocery stores is on the rise but the cachet of the name label hasn’t yet made of them ‘names to be seen with.’
I find Anthony Giddens’ account of the self as a ‘reflexive project’ a convincing analysis of individual identity creation and the social relationships that stem from it in what he calls late modern society. We each of us weave/create our own ongoing autobiographical narrative in a way quite different from the predetermined and predictable life-courses so familiar to even our recent forebears. In this reflexive project the things of commodities and consumption play a prominent role. The place of exchange, the label, the price I pay, the style of the product, the social location of the product, the credibility of the commodity in terms of fashion and ownership – all those factors and more are parts of the social process of shopping and what I as shopper am achieving for myself as I shop. No one in Europe or North America is
outside this consumptive culture.
The sheer power of consumptive culture is one of the reasons why I want to argue that what I have termed the Aldi bag
syndrome is an incredibly forceful metaphor in analyzing preaching in contemporary British society. The discourse of commodity and consumption is so dominant that its tentacles touch every aspect of our lives.
Some definitions are required to keep this argument focussed. I understand a commodity to be an article that is exchanged; bought and sold. Traditionally a commodity has been thought of as something material; a product, an artefact, or a raw material itself, rather than an activity which has more usually been called a service. The commodity/service distinction is, however, increasingly difficult to maintain as commodification literally colonises the rest of life. Think of how many things that once were public services are now commodity exchanges. As consumption as it were runs out of things to consume, activities are reified, made into things, and as commodities can therefore be exchanged. I reserve that word commodification to this process whereby the habits and dispositions we have learned in the consumption of things that are literal commodities spreads into other arenas of human activity. By the term consumer culture I understand that generalised way of life in which commercially organised consumption dominates personal and inter-personal activity. This is in marked contrast to the focus on production of earlier ways of living. In consumer culture, the accumulation of things, and of services and other less tangible activities and behaviours treated as things, is regarded as a principal marker of human well-being. Commodification is perhaps the essential component of consumer culture.
All this is a common enough theme in contemporary cultural studies, but I intend to extend that discussion into the practice of so-called mainstream Christian religion using preaching as the focus. The shopping self, to use that term as a kind of shorthand, is the same self that sits through a sermon week by week. The mental frameworks and categories that
the shopping self uses in commodity discernment, purchase, and deployment and in recreation are applied with like vigour to worship and other aspects of Christian practice. In other words, that Christian activity is not outside (as it were) the dominating consumptive culture, but embedded within it.
Preaching is an aspect of Christian practice that is particularly susceptible to concepts drawn from consumer culture. If only preachers would learn from the techniques of selling, promotion and entertainment, then people would pay attention to them! Let the preacher beguile, amuse, stimulate, delight, entertain, and all in minutes or even seconds because the greatest error of all is to bore. Let, it is said, the preacher learn from the world, and then present the alternative. The analysis I am advocating offers an understanding quite contrary to that location of sermonizing socially. In the context of an intensely commodifying culture I believe that a sharp disjunction between technique and content, between worldly methods and spiritual message, is no longer tenable. It is commonplace within the practice of preaching to draw a
rigid distinction between the values that are attached to consumer/media culture and the values of Christianity. Preaching in this view is essentially a translation process that enables the gospel to be heard within an alien culture. Whatever cultural analysis the preacher undertakes is solely to facilitate the effectiveness of this translation process. Before I go on to say why I don’t think that model works any longer, let me offer some examples of it:
This is Jolyon Mitchell in a much appreciated book examining preaching in the light of the development of radio –
'Preaching then is facing a series of crises, which raise serious challenges
for those seeking to invite their listeners to participate in the Christian story.
First, the preacher is faced with the challenge of speaking to an easily distracted
audience, many of whom are no longer accustomed to listening to a single
speaker for a long period of time. Secondly, when so many other powerful
forms of electronic communication are competing for their listeners' imaginations,
the preacher can understandably lose confidence in preaching as an
effective form of communication. Thirdly, as a communicator probably nurtured
in a literary culture, the preacher needs to face the recent transformations
in orality, such as those exemplified by the evolving discursive practices
employed on television and radio. '
[1990:24]
Jolyon Mitchell, Visually Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of Preaching (Edinburgh, T & T Clarke, 1999)
Notice that the crises in preaching are signified as communication problems. Preaching takes its place amongst the innumerable other activities in our society defined as subject to ‘communication problems.’ As Deborah Cameron has suggested there has in recent generations been a marked shift towards defining all problems, in arenas as diverse as marriage, selling, the academy, health care and others, as communication problems. As Cameron has noted, this is fundamentally a therapeutic model: diagnose the problem, determine a likely solution, and apply the strategy. This is exactly the model Mitchell applies to preaching: understand the visual dominated orality used by radio and TV; diagnose the consequences of that for preaching [loss of social confidence in rhetorical skills, inability to maintain concentration, familiarity with the conversational as against the logically formal, etc]; develop a communication methodology in
preaching that takes account of these things [this means learning new skills]; and apply that methodology.
I probably caricature Mitchell’s position somewhat as he is quite subtle and nuanced in his use of the therapeutic model.
Rogness, a widely cited American Professor and teacher of preaching, is rather more assertive in his usage:
[But] 'people listen and hear differently in this
world of television. When we preachers understand the dynamics of this new
world, then the gospel can ring with new vigour and life in our preaching.'
[1994:10]
He continues,
'While visiting many congregations I am constantly
astonished to hear how much complaining there is about preaching. Faithful
churchgoers find themselves wondering, "What's happened to good preaching?"
"Where have all the good preachers gone?"
Preaching has fallen on hard times.
There are several reasons for this malaise. Some pastors don't work
very hard on their sermons. Some are out of touch with their congregations.
Others are ineffective public speakers. Much preaching is theological fluff.
Another part of the problem is that people in the pews have such a wide range of
expectations from the sermon that it is impossible to satisfy everybody.
Yet the truth is that many pastors work hard at their preaching, but sense it is not
effective, and they cannot put their finger on the reasons why.
A fundamental reason for this situation is that we live in the midst of a massive
communications revolution, which we have only begun to understand. This
revolution inevitably affects the way people listen to sermons, and if we fail
to take this into account in preaching we will not reach our audience.'
[11]
Michael Rogness, Preaching to a TV Generation (Lima, CSS Publishing 1994)
Leaving aside the obvious point about the apparently non-ironic use of the term ‘audience,’ one of the things that strikes me about Rogness is that all his remarks use the concept of effective communication defined precisely in the terms Cameron has highlighted as a skill to be learned. In the passage I read, substitute for the word ‘preaching’ ‘marriage,’ ‘teaching,’ ‘retailing,’ or ‘men’s health’ and it will still make perfect sense! Everything is a communication problem.
This brings me back to the Aldi bag syndrome. In their focus on skills, delivery, effectiveness, and process, both Mitchell and Rogness [and the many others who take a similar line] have unwittingly created preaching as yet another commodity to be developed and consumed. The procedures of presentation and the habits of interpretation familiar in the common-round of life in a consumer culture are applied wholesale to this aspect of religious practice. Traditional ideas of formation and the dynamics of institutional belonging across time are jettisoned in favour of effective communication. In
doing this some of the shaming associated with the consumption of preaching is, like decanting the good purchased from Aldi, obscured, to the relief of the somewhat embarrassed consumers. Whether it be a chat show-like conversational
style, a business presentation-like address with flashy overheads or a point by point explanation like a political pundit, the form follows categories learnt within a consumer world. The familiarity of the forms provides a way towards
legitimising an activity that is otherwise regarded with some suspicion. The word ‘preaching’ is after all widely used in a derogatory way in popular speech, a usage fulsomely acknowledged in the Oxford English Dictionary. The implication
is that any reasonable person would surely have to justify subjecting her or his self to sermons. Commodity categories may provide just such justification.
My argument isn’t that communications skills are unimportant in the process of preaching, nor that sermons don’t need to be effective, but rather that preaching, like other aspects of religion, is subject to the all-embracing power of commodification and consumption. Like Vincent Miller, I believe that consumer culture has transformed, and is transforming, our religious beliefs and practices [2004:31]. The preacher, like everyone else, cannot stand aloof from
that culture and determine from some illusory neutral spot how to subvert it. The reality is that how we ‘avow, interpret, and employ the beliefs, symbols, values, and practices’ [Miller, 2004:31] of our religious traditions has been
radically changed by consumer culture.
In this context, easy talk of counter-cultural messages is probably beside the point. Just as it is all too easy to unwittingly employ strategies born of consumerism in efforts to critique consumerism, and thereby neutralise the critique offered, so also the marketplace is incredibly adept in turning criticism into a marketing ploy. Think of the call for simpler, purer products; or less packaging; or organic foodstuffs; or green environmentally friendly products. All those criticisms and
more have been turned into successful ways of selling yet more products. Consumer culture simply encompasses dissent and uses it for its own purposes. There is no reason to suppose that religious critiques are any less susceptible to this process. Indeed, the reality is that all religious symbols, artefacts and ideas are a rich seam of material mined by commodifiers in a constant search for new products. The album Chant by the Benedictine Monks of Santa Domingo
demonstrates how marketable religion can be. As an aside, it is interesting to observe what amounts to the branding of Rowan Williams, reminiscent in presentation of the things published under Pope John Paul II’s name, and quite
unlike the publications of previous Archbishops of Canterbury. None of this means that Christian theological concepts cannot bring a critical voice to the consumer world, but simply that the processes involved work in more than one
direction. Preaching to be a critique has to do more than just assert itself as such.
Part of the wiliness of commodification is that it de-anchors symbols from their moorings of tradition and exploits them in ways sometimes quite alien to their origin. Colin Morris, for example, points out how TV’s penchant for the
spectacular has tended to remythologise the great religions. He writes,
'They are treated as part of the main flow of a broad naturalistic view of the planet,
its wild life, scenic vistas, exotic architecture and richly diverse human
types. The camera has both rationalised and romanticised the life of the temple,
mosque and shrine.
So Christians in the pew find themselves at the impact
point of a clash of symbolism, trying to reconcile television's highly stylised
version of the world's religions with the response offered by various theologies
of mission, also highly stylised.
I need not labour the point. Not only the Church's understanding of mission
but most aspects of its life suffer the impact of this clash of symbols
offering different explanations of the same reality.
It's a perennial problem for preachers required to mine the raw material of
sermons from whatever vein of experience preoccupies the congregation. For years
they have had to take account of the televisually mediated account of the world.'
[1984:202]
(Colin Morris, God in a Box, (London, Hodder and Stoughton 1984)
Our symbols are no longer our own, if indeed they ever were.
To summarise:
Such is the power of commodification that it is not possible for preachers to employ its advantageous techniques without further spreading the habits of interpretation that go with it. Here the Aldi bag contains the embarrassing old style things of rhetorical authority, lived tradition over time, and learnt response. At the same time beliefs, practices and symbols that
form the framework for the Christian life are abstracted from that life, and commodified for easy consumption. The communal, traditional setting which gave those beliefs, practices and symbols their power to shape human existence is
effectively neutralised. Here the Aldi bag is the logic of religious practice, doctrine, and rules which are dispensed with as overly rigid, restricting and exclusivist. No one wants to be seen carrying doctrines around nowadays! Such is the double bind of preaching in a commodifying culture.
Bibliography:
Cameron, Deborah
2000 Good to Talk? Living and Working in a Communication Culture. London: Sage.
2003 Globalizing Communication in Aitchison, Jean and Lewis, Diana M 2003 New Media Language. London: Routledge.
n/d Good to Talk? The Cultural Politics of ‘Communication.’ Research paper, Institute of Education, University of
London [www.ioe.ac.uk/lie/files/dctalk.html]
Giddens, Anthony
1991 Self Identity and Late Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Miller, Vincent J
2004 Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture. New York: Continuum.
Mitchell, Jolyon P
1999 Visually Speaking: Radio and the Renaissance of Preaching. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Morris, Colin
1984 God-in-a-Box. Christian Strategy in the Television Age. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
1996 Raising the Dead: The Art of the Preacher as Public Performer. London: Fount.
Rogness, Michael
1994 Preaching to a TV Generation. Lima: CSS Publishing.
Tanner, Kathryn
1997 Theories of Culture. A New Agenda for Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
