Christian materialism
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Christian materialism is the combination of the theology, concepts, and holy writings of Christianity with the philosophy of materialism, which places primary importance on material objects and their interrelationships.
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[edit] Historical background
Historically, materialism and Christianity have generally been at odds. This is due on the one hand to anti-materialist passages in Christian scripture; and on the other to the denial by most materialist thinkers of the existence of the kinds of spiritual realities that were fundamental to the traditional Christian church. Despite these apparent discrepancies, the two beliefs are not always viewed as being in opposition. In religious thought, Hindu idealism is perhaps the opposite of Christian materialism.
[edit] Josemaria Escriva and Opus Dei
The most visible use of the term is found in the writings of Josemaría Escrivá, a Spanish Roman Catholic saint of the twentieth century, who said that all temporal realities have a sanctifying power and Christians can find God in the most ordinary material things. As such, it is associated with the Roman Catholic prelature of Opus Dei which Escriva founded.
Escriva criticized those who "have tried to present the Christian way of life as something exclusively spiritual, proper to pure, extraordinary people, who remain aloof from the contemptible things of this world, or at most tolerate them as something necessarily attached to the spirit, while we live on this earth. When things are seen in this way, churches become the setting par excellence of the Christian life. And being a Christian means going to church, taking part in sacred ceremonies, being taken up with ecclesiastical matters, in a kind of segregated world, which is considered to be the ante-chamber of heaven, while the ordinary world follows its own separate path."
Instead, he affirmed the "high value of the material." "Authentic Christianity," he says, "which professes the resurrection of all flesh, has always quite logically opposed 'dis-incarnation,' without fear of being judged materialistic. We can, therefore, rightfully speak of a Christian materialism, which is boldly opposed to those materialisms which are blind to the spirit." (Italics added; see also [1])
In an address to a theological symposium, Holiness and the World, studying the teachings of Josemaria Escriva, John Paul II referred to one of his homilies:
- There is nothing that is outside of the concern of Christ. Speaking with theological rigor ... one cannot say that there are things — good, noble or even indifferent — which are exclusively profane; for the Word of God has made his dwelling the sons of men, he was hungry and thirsty, worked with his hands, knew friendship and obedience, experience sorrow and death. (Conversations 112)
In connection with this quote, John Paul II said that the Catholic Church today is "conscious of serving a redemption that concerns every aspect of human existence," an awareness which was "prepared by a gradual intellectual and spiritual development." He also said that the message of Escriva, which has contributed in this direction, stems "from a unique grasp of the radiant, universal force of the Redeemer's grace." He later called Escriva "one of Christianity's great witnesses."
[edit] Evangelical ministry and capitalist marketing
According to the Christian Existential Humanism: "Christian Materialism quietly emerged from the earlier 'fundamentalist' movement in the late twentieth century, in a bold takeover that went largely unnoticed outside the religious community. The key to the worldview was the development of a Mechanism that closely paralleled that of Materialism (in order to compete effectively with Materialism). The explicit goal of the resulting movement was to reverse the social decline that had accompanied the rise of Individualism and the breakdown of traditional communities. In order to do this, however, it sacrificed the spirituality and Christian Idealism that (due to the decline of Idealism) had become a drag on the popularity of Christianity, and embraced the tenets of Materialism."
"The final step marking the change from fundamentalism to Christian Materialism was a cross-pollination of evangelical ministry and capitalist marketing techniques. To support this, a set of new consumer goods was created that paralleled mainstream consumer goods, but with a (often uneasily) grafted-on Christian message. This was the root of the emergence of Christian rock, Christian heavy metal and Christian rap, as part of a deliberate effort to shift popular trends in teenage culture wholesale into an alternate, Christian universe." (Italics added; [2])
[edit] Critique of American religious culture
The term is also used by some as a critical assessment of the eagerness of many modern American churches to adapt or adopt aspects of mainstream American material culture -- a trend typified by the popularity of religious-themed material goods such as tee-shirts, bumper stickers and magnets.
