The Christian Consumer: Living Ethically in a Material World
Leader: Laura Hartman, Augustana College
Be it fair-trade coffee or foreign oil, our choices as consumers affect the well-being of humans around the globe, not to mention the natural world and ourselves. Drawing from the facilitator's scholarship on this subject, this interactive workshop will encourage participants to develop a framework for ethical consumption that is rooted in their Christian faith.
What Is the Issue?
Making wise choices in our consumption is complicated. In this globalized consumer world, everything we consume has an impact positive or negative on ourselves, our loved ones, near neighbors, faraway neighbors and the natural world. Often, perhaps through sweatshop labor or air pollution from shipping, our purchases can cause significant harm, even when we don’t intend to do anything wrong. We may try to prioritize fair trade products or locally grown options, but we inevitably fall short of perfection. How do we wrestle with this fundamental inability to create good through our consumption?
Wise voices from the Christian tradition can help guide us. Avoiding complicity in sin is important, but so is embracing God’s creation, loving our neighbors and seeking God’s kingdom. Ultimately, we seek ways to align our actions with our values, consuming with integrity. Practices such as observing a weekly Sabbath and extending the Eucharist beyond the communion table are our first steps toward moving beyond consumption’s harm, and into its holiness.
Resources
-
The Center for a New American Dream
www.newdream.org
-
Living the Sabbath: Discovering the Rhythms of Rest and Delight, by Norman Wirzba
-
Food for Life: The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating and Sharing Food: Christian Practices for Enjoyment, by L. Shannon Jung
United Methodist Women Connection
Suggestions for Action
Create support groups around certain behaviors that my book advocates greater thoughtfulness in our consumption, or truly observing a weekly Sabbath day of rest. These behaviors are very hard to adhere to alone, but with community support they can be done and will bear great spiritual fruits!
Reform the consumption that happens at your church. The Union of Concerned Scientists tells us that, environmentally speaking, our highest-impact behaviors are heating and cooling, transportation, and food.
-
Can your church lead the way in energy efficiency innovations such as geothermal systems or solar cells? If you are building a new church or addition, can it be designed to minimize the need for heating and cooling? Can you keep the church cooler in the winter and provide shawls or slippers to those who get cold?
-
Can your church be an advocate for alternative transportation? Do you have secure, easy-to-use bike racks available? Do you need to lobby for reliable bus service that comes on Sundays to your church? Do you have safe, cleared sidewalks to allow for pedestrians to come to church? Can you coordinate carpools to minimize the number of cars in your parking lot? (And once you no longer need such a large parking lot can you tear up half of it and plant a garden?)
-
What do people eat at your church? How can your food consumption be both celebratory and light on the earth? Can you phase out paper or Styrofoam by building community around the dish sink? Can you make a policy of “only fair trade chocolate allowed” or “local foods preferred” for pot-lucks?
How can you extend the Eucharist beyond the communion table? In the workshop, we will brainstorm other activities to bless, break, and share our bounty with others, that allow us to blend both feasting and fasting, and find holiness in spite of consumption’s harms.
For best results: Save or Print this page using the “Print it” icon in the gray bar at the bottom of your browser window.
Leader
Laura Hartman is assistant professor of religion at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill. Her areas of specialization include environmental, sexual, social and medical ethics. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Indiana University and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia. She is author of
The Christian Consumer: Living Faithfully in a Fragile World (Oxford University Press, 2011), which offers a view of consumption that draws on Christian thought from biblical times to the present day. She has become an advocate for public transit and a regular shopper at Goodwill and the farmer’s market. She asks her readers to examine the often overlooked habits, structures and choices that underlie the patterns of consumption in human lives. Hartman also blogs for the Huffington Post.