Early Christians, alive during 100 to 500 CE, thought of Christianity as a way of life, says Bass — not a sudden conversion or a doctrinal belief. Early Christians were generally pacifists; war involved killing, killing was murder, and murder was wrong, plus soldiers had to participate in acts of worship to the state, the gods, and the Roman emperor, which was considered idolatrous. These believers were warned against loving money, being stingy, and supporting the rich, and struggled with their relationship to material things like property and wealth. Justin Martyr, an early defender of the faith, said, “We who formerly…valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possession, now bring what we have into a common stock.”38
When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 313, the church itself became rich and the biblical admonition to “go and sell what you have and give to the poor” became allegorical, not literal — a call to give up not money exactly, but whatever it was you happened to love more than God. From 500-1450, church and state joined together in the rise of Christendom. Money was poured into church art and architecture as a vision of God made manifest in the world; the stories of the Bible were represented visually in stained glass so pre-literate followers of the faith could “read” them. Islam emerged, and pacifism gave way to the crusades as Christians and Muslims warred for converts and territory.39
During the Reformation (1450-1650), art in Christianity gave way to words. Christianity changed from a way of life to a carefully worded confession of doctrine. Scripture was read for its transformative power. As a Reformation Christian, you lived the devout life in order to be saved. You believed you could be right with God by making society right, and social justice became a cornerstone of religious practice. Germany’s Martin Luther called faith a gift and said God was about love, not judgment. France’s John Calvin said Protestants ought to work hard and live frugally, that hard work was God’s will and money amassed as a result was a sign of God’s blessing.40
In modern Christianity (1650-1945), faith became tied to morality, not doctrine. Faith and learning became entangled. People valued certainty, believing that the truth could be searched out and solved. God could be accessed directly instead of experienced through church hierarchy, theology, or the written word. Religion was supposed to make people happy, and God’s will could be reasoned out, replacing mystery with knowledge of nature’s design. Progress was equated with hope, and people believed they didn’t need to be transformed spiritually beyond where they naturally were.41
According to Bass, contemporary Christianity (1945-present), has grown more accepting of the traditions and practices of other religions, downplaying the divisions of economic status, class, health, education, and nationality to focus on practicing universal hospitality and justice.42 In contemporary Christianity, people grow into the Christian life by becoming one of Christ’s disciples, a spiritual apprentice formed in the image of God with habits and affections distinct from those of the world. Contemporary Christians aspire to care for the suffering, paying particular attention to the poor. They take on the responsibility of caring for others because they consider themselves to be their brother’s keeper based on the idea that all human beings are children of God, brothers and sisters created in God’s image. Believing that people need God and God’s abundance, and that we belong to one another in communities, they trust our relationships with each other matter, that our fates are intertwined.43 In contemporary Christianity, Christianity is formative, capable of making you a new person in the image of Christ. Beliefs represent revealed truth, and souls need to be redeemed from their original sinful state.
Then the story changed. Again.
The economic story says religion too can be understood in terms of economic values and assumptions. Religious market theory, in particular, says the world of religion is a religious economy, and that the religious economy operates like a commercial economy. The religious market, like the actual market, operates according to the laws of supply and demand. Your interest in religion, as compared to your neighbor’s, represents variation in demand, and the different activities of different churches represent variation in supply. People interested in religion and spirituality are a market of current and potential customers. Different kinds of churches represent the set of firms that want to serve those markets, and different religions represent different product lines.44
In the economic story, you go to church as a buyer looking to satisfy your religious preferences, whatever those preferences may be, since the content of those preferences doesn’t matter. No one religion is particularly “moral” or “good.” What is “moral” or “good” is just a consumer preference. There is no divine authority that makes your preference right or wrong; you are the sole authority on what you prefer, and in your spiritual search, you’re searching for a religious product — a certain kind of religion — that meets your needs as a consumer.45
A church is an efficient and eager religious firm that exists to create, maintain, and supply religion to people like you. Because some people are more or less interested in religion than others, churches have to market their products vigorously and compete with other churches for your support. A single religious product line — any one religion — is inherently unable to satisfy the whole range of individual tastes because some people prefer their religion to be more strict or more permissive, more exclusive or more inclusive. Different segments of the market (children, teens, young families, empty-nesters, seniors, and shut-ins) will prefer different aspects of religion and so can be targeted with different product offerings as churches compete with each other for market share.46
In the economic story, America’s most successful churches are deemed to be those that model themselves on businesses, complete with MBA-staffed management teams, strategic plans, identification of target markets, consulting services, and thousands of customers.47 Pastors are CEOs. Laypeople are advised to “invest your life for the highest return” and live a life of “entrepreneurial faith” by applying the principles of business entrepreneurship to their spirituality: “When you are a spiritual entrepreneur, you are obeying God…According to Scripture, being an entrepreneur is for everyone.” Jesus is “the Ultimate Entrepreneur,” having “set the standard for entrepreneurship…Jesus looked at life around Him and saw how He could add value.”48
According to the economic story, Christianity is a brand and the cross, as a recognizable symbol, is Christianity’s logo. Churches are to focus on efficiency, effectiveness, and organizational growth. As the former executive vice president and business manager of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association put it, “Our job is to dispense the world’s greatest product — with the greatest economy — to the greatest number of people — as fast as possible.”49 Churches grow by being responsive to customer needs, and customer needs are revealed through demographic and target market research that focuses on what the unchurched in the neighborhood want from a local church.
If you’re already in the pew, you too belong to a target market. Your church is a social network and your pastor is a network connector who can spread product information and influence your purchasing behavior. In 2005, church leaders “had a chance to win a free trip to London and $1,000 in cash if they mentioned Disney’s film ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ in their sermons.”50 In Detroit, Chase Bank sponsored one mega-church’s back-to-school festival by giving out free backpacks, and Pepsi donated a 15-passenger van to the church after the members bought 13,500 cases of product; the church’s communications director described the deal as “win-win.”51 In 1998, Pope John Paul II’s visit to Mexico City was sponsored by over two dozen corporations, and the Pope’s image was used on packaging and billboard ads.52
In the economic story, there is no abundance of God — only scarcity. Relationships are impersonal and anonymous transactions in a religious marketplace. What you believe is a man-made product that needs to be marketed to appeal to people where they’re at. Churches are religious serv
ice providers focused on customer service, organizational growth, and quantifiable success.53 Theologian Darrell Guder writes, “It is now clear, as we look back over the last 100 to 125 years, that the value systems and operating structures of the large American corporation have become the dominant model for the institutional church. Over the last century, the Christian religion has become a big American business. We have centralized for efficiency and good management, developed major headquarters, accepted numerical and financial growth as the most important indications of success, introduced statistical measurement to determine that success, and made religion into a product.”54
Finally, theologians Philip Kenneson and James Street warn that putting a marketing orientation at the center of the church’s life “radically alters the shape and character of the Christian faith by redefining the character and mission of the church in terms of management exchanges between producers and consumers.” They acknowledge that many things once deemed important in the Christian life do not fit in the management/marketing scheme of spirituality, and conclude that “not surprisingly, these matters are neglected in a marketing paradigm.”55
YOUR EDUCATION
Just yesterday I was looking at the catalog of a nearby college. I couldn’t believe the courses they were offering. How to use a computer. How to make a good investment. How to get a good job. How to, how to. There was hardly one course to make the inner man grow. If you suggest that a course in ancient history may play a role in a person’s growth, they laugh at you. What relevance does it have to our life today?
—93-YEAR-OLD SOPHIE MUMFORD IN 1995, INTERVIEWED BY STUDS TERKEL
We have taken the great leap forward and said, ‘Let’s pretend we’re a corporation.’
—JOHN LOMBARDI, PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA, 1997
EDUCATION WAS ONCE THOUGHT of as a service to humanity, as a cornerstone of democracy. Through education, you came to an enlightened understanding of the world, became someone who could think critically, someone who knew how to participate effectively in society and how to hold democratic leaders accountable. Education was a public good, a social investment in our life together as a society. We believed that education improved us collectively whether we were personally the ones being educated or not. We used education to redistribute opportunity. Education would narrow the gap between the haves and have-nots by making access to a better life more equal. If you started out at a disadvantage, through education you’d have a chance to improve your life.
For the most part, education was kept in the hands of public institutions. We worried corporations might be tempted to exploit students who would find it hard to gauge the quality of education they were getting. Because we believed education was a public good, we subsidized it or paid for it in full with our taxes as a way to pursue social and economic goals deemed to be in the public interest.1 Schools promoted a set of values that helped students understand what it meant to be a citizen. At school, you ideally learned to cooperate, resolve your differences, and work with people who were different than you. You learned that you might draw, write, run, or do math better or worse than the person next to you, but that there was generally a place for everyone. Each person had something to contribute.
Science was an important part of education, and had a lofty purpose: to create knowledge for the benefit of humanity. Science was a calling — not a career. Scientists didn’t have to justify their work to outsiders because their research projects didn’t cost much, and what those projects did cost wasn’t paid for with public funds. A line, though not always a distinct one, existed between basic research that was primarily about discovering new knowledge for its own sake, and applied research where the real-world use of that knowledge was the focus.
As members of the scientific community, scientists were expected to share their data and results with other community members. Their research belonged to the intellectual commons. Publishing work in journals was about advancing scientific knowledge for the good of humanity, not staking a claim in intellectual property rights.2 Bringing research to market wasn’t that important, and the idea of personally profiting from your work was generally absurd. Getting something patented was a complicated process anyway. Scientists also worried that patents would erode the pursuit of basic research — and patenting something like medical research wasn’t above-board because of the negative implications for public health. They conducted scientific research knowing their work was valuable and important because it benefited humanity.3
As a scientist, you were expected to stay detached and objective in regards to your research. You steered clear of emotional or financial entanglements in your work, seeking only the truth of the matter at hand and challenging the conventional wisdom in your discipline.4 Truth in science mattered. Galileo had linked the two, saying: “The conclusions of natural science are true and necessary, and the judgment of man has nothing to do with them.”5 What he meant was that a scientific result was what it was — you couldn’t just create a different outcome because you didn’t like what you’d found. Galileo knew what he was talking about; he was tried for heresy and sentenced to house arrest by the Roman Catholic Church after he contradicted the church’s teaching and claimed that the earth wasn’t at the center of the universe.
For hundreds of years, science was “the pursuit of the Good and the True” — something that was intrinsically valuable because truth itself was intrinsically valuable. A scientist was viewed as a certain kind of person: someone who had the moral calibre to work without the rewards of wealth and power, to share his or her work with colleagues, and to stick to rigorous standards “in the service of a noble end: namely, the advance of knowledge and power on behalf of humanity.”6
Then the story of education and science changed.
In the economic story, education is ushered into the world of markets and becomes a commodity. Students become buyers. Schools become sellers, service providers competing for business in the education services industry.7 The economic story says that education is a private good, not a public one. Education is something that helps you get ahead in life as an individual. Education matters, not because it will help you become a fully formed and informed citizen capable of participating effectively in society, but because it will help you get a better job, make more money, and improve your quality of life.
Education becomes a financial investment that can offer you a high rate of return. You’re to think hard about those rates of return when you choose what you want to be when you grow up. You’re helped out by news headlines like this one: “Arts degrees reduce earnings.”8 In 2003, the BBC reported that university graduates with arts degrees in subjects like history and English make between 2 and 10 percent less than high school graduates. Language and education aren’t lucrative, but law, medicine, math and engineering are solid financial investments. One of the researchers interviewed warned, “Feeling warm about literature doesn’t pay the rent. Maybe an average arts student knows he or she is not going to do very well. Maybe they do not. Education is a risk individuals take. We need to make sure people have the correct perceptions.”9
The economic story tells us that because education is a private good and not a public one, the people who are getting educated should pay for that education themselves. Public funding for education drops. Tuition rates rise.10 If you’re enrolled in a professional program like law, medicine, or business that offers a high rate of return on your investment by giving you a chance to make a hefty future salary, you are expected to pay more for those higher returns. Between 1995 and 2002, tuition fees in Canada soared by 132 percent in medicine, 168 percent in dentistry, and 61 percent in law, compared to only 34 percent in all undergraduate programs — and after accounting for inflation.11
If you’re not already wealthy, climbing tuition rates make it harder for you to become educated at all. In the economic story, though, access to higher education is not about keeping tuition rates down — it’s about loaning students the money to pa
y for higher tuition, giving them better access to debt. More students are made eligible for student loans, and the amount students are allowed to borrow increases.12 Those leery about taking on that kind of debt have fewer options than they once did. Scholarships and grants — money that doesn’t have to be paid back — are now based more on merit than financial need, and the criteria used to measure merit are highly correlated with socioeconomic status. In other words, students who are more affluent to begin with have higher merit scores, which makes them more likely to be awarded financial aid that doesn’t have be paid back. Education scholars observe that in the twenty-first century, more economic and racial inequality now exists in access to higher education than since the 1960s.13
The economic story says you should choose which school to attend based not on the quality of the teaching but on the brand recognition and cachet of the school and its degrees; a better brand represents a better return on your investment.14 In your classes, you compete against other students to get ahead. You’re ranked against your classmates and your ranking is largely based on how you perform as an individual.15 If you’re independent, flexible, adaptive, fast, self-governing, and entrepreneurial, you’re someone to watch. High-performing, valued students are those who can help the school achieve its benchmarks in its own competition with other schools. If you’re not a high performer, you’re at risk of holding the school back and becoming labelled as an undesirable.16
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