We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
On Consumerism

Werner Kunz via Compfight
As we enter the upcoming holiday season, most of us will be bombarded with advertisements attempting to convince us that what we have isn’t enough, that our lives are incomplete without the newest and most updated products, and that our main goal is to find the “perfect” gifts for everyone on our lists. We are already hearing Christmas music on the radio. “Black Friday” sales now start on Thanksgiving evening. The relentless push of consumerism sometimes feels inescapable.
In this reflection, Tony Campolo encourages Christians to push back against consumerism, which he calls “the enemy of the church”.
Here is an excerpt:
I have heard a lot of teachers condemn the secular humanism of our world. The truth is that secular humanism is not the primary enemy of the Church. Instead, the enemy of the Church isconsumerism. We have made an idol out of the things that are being sold. We bow down and worship the commodities that are paraded before us on television. We are enslaved to a mindset that tells us that we must possess more and more because we can never have enough. These are the things that are dragging us away from Jesus.
Category: General
Tags: Discipleship, Social Issues
Related Reading
Evangelism or Social Action: What’s the Priority?
Throughout the last century Evangelicals were known much more for their emphasis on personal piety than for their social action. This is fortunately beginning to change. Pioneers like Jim Wallis, Tony Campolo and Ron Sider have for decades been trying to get Evangelicals to see that the Bible mandates that followers of Jesus care for…
Jesus & Racial Reconciliation
Lorenia via Compfight If you were to read an account today of a white man offering his front row seat on a public bus to an elderly African American lady, you’d probably think this was a nice gesture, but nothing more. However, if you learned that the event happened in Birmingham Alabama in 1955, you’d…
Notre Dame and Why Beauty Matters
Article by Jordan Sutton, from the Holy Week Art Series at ClearPath.Life “Is Paris burning?” That is a direct quote from Adolf Hitler in 1944 on a phone call with his general, Dietrich Hugo Hermann von Choltitz, who oversaw the Nazi occupation of Paris. Hitler had given his highly decorated general orders to “level” the…
Greg’s Review of Changing Your Mind by Victor Copan
Several months ago Victor Copan introduced himself to me at the end of a Woodland Hills Church service. He told me about his recently published book, Changing Your Mind. “I know you’re into spiritual disciplines and neuroscience,” he said, “so I suspect you might enjoy my book. It’s about the interface of these two topics.”…
Shouldn’t preachers rally Christians to fight political injustice?
Question: My pastor has publicly supported your book The Myth of a Christian Nation. But he’s recently called on the church to take a stand against the injustice of our local government cutting funding for inner city recreational facilities. This seems right to me, since we’re suppose to defend the cause of the poor and oppressed.…
In a democracy, don’t Christians have a responsibility to participate in politics?
Question: You’ve argued that Christians shouldn’t try to gain power in government on the grounds that Jesus didn’t try to gain power in the political system of his day. But his government didn’t allow for such power. Caesar and Pilate weren’t elected by anyone. Our government allows for this. So don’t we have a responsibility…