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mission shaped church

generations. So religion is less likely to be a matter of culture and more

one of choice.

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Consumerism will also affect the ways in which people evaluate truth

claims. The way people think about shopping also becomes the way people

think about `truth'.

When many voices can be heard, who can say that one should be

heeded more than another? . . . When the only criteria left for choosing

between them are learned in the marketplace, then truth appears as 

a commodity. We hear the people `buy into' a belief or, rather than

rejecting a dogma as false, they say they `cannot buy' this or that

viewpoint.

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It is important to distinguish between `consumer society' (a term that

describes the current shape of Western capitalist societies) and the

ideology of `consumerism' (which can be seen as the dominant idolatry of

those societies). In one sense there is no alternative to a consumer society.

That is what we are, that is where we are and that is where we must be

church and embody the gospel. To fulfil our Lord's prayer for the Church

(John 17.15 18) we are called to be church `in' consumer society, but we

dare not let ourselves be `of' consumerism.

At its worst, consumerism creates a self indulgent society.

Pleasure lies at the heart of consumerism. It finds in consumerism a

unique champion who promises to liberate it both from its bondage 

to sin, duty and morality as well as its ties to faith, spirituality and

redemption. Consumerism proclaims pleasure not merely as the right 

of every individual but also as every individual's obligation to him or 

her self. . . . The pursuit of pleasure, untarnished by guilt or shame, 

becomes the new image of the good life.

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In this, the poor are those who cannot buy things. A consumer society

excludes the poor.

Postmodern society produces its members first and foremost as

consumers   and the poor are singularly unfit for that role. For the first

time in history the poor are un functional and useless, and as such 

they are, for all practical intents and purposes, `outside society'.

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A network and consumer society presents a particular challenge to Christian

mission in general, and to questions of the missionary shape of the Church

in particular. A network society can both connect and fragment. It can

include and exclude at local, national and global levels. Mobility can 

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