Christianity, commodification, and Wal-Mart

Yesterday, Streak's other friend and I had lunch with friends at a great Asian place in Oklahoma City. After a great lunch, we drove over to Oklahoma City's own Full Circle Bookstore which is one of those rare locally owned bookstores. We rarely pass up a chance to visit.

I have written here many times about the danger of conservative evangelicals selling out their faith. As much as I dislike the current president and his policies, much of my concern is for those conservatives who are true believers and for the conservative church as a whole. Once you sell out, it is hard to retrieve that reputation.

The danger for the church in so blindly following Bush or referring to him (as someone did on another blog) as our "Bible-believing Christian President," is that you then risk your entire religious reputation on this politician. When he acts badly, you look bad--especially when you don't speak out. And since you have stated things like "God wants Bush for these times" you can't criticize him very well, since that would be criticizing God.

The dangers are many. One of them is that you have made your faith a marketing and political tool--just another one in a vast market place. That means that people who don't really believe what you believe are willing to do whatever to convince you otherwise to sell you their candidate, movie, or, hell, face cream. What is to stop a politician from repeating the "faith talk" to get your vote and then enacting policies that undermine both your faith and your lives. (One could argue that Bush has already done that, but I will leave that for another day.) In any case, it makes you incredibly vulnerable to hucksters and fakers and con-artists.

I really wasn't thinking about that at the bookstore yesterday. But while sitting in front of their fireplace, I read parts of a new book on the class-action suit against Wal-Mart. Women are routinely paid less than men, overlooked for promotions, and told to make way for less-qualified men because they are family men. Workers have been locked in stores after clocking out and forced to work with no pay (that called slavery, btw). The company has used its giant power to bully companies, has cozied up to China and any other place that has no worker safety or employment protection laws, and has generally bullied small-town America as well. To be fair, I have never been a fan of the store--I hate the experience of shopping there and resent their predatory tactics.

What does this have to do with turning Christianity into a commodity? Reading the book, it is clear that the company has sold itself as a "family friendly" company, and many of the workers believe that Sam Walton was not only a good Christian man, he was a devoted family man. Many of these women workers applied for jobs there because of that perception and hoped to participate in a pro-family business. Evidently Walton was not much of a family man--his widow said that he was not around the family that much, which kind of makes sense since he was busy building this monstrosity. His faith was pretty tepid as well--he was a nominal church goer (kind of like the President :) ) and didn't tithe as they company myths report. Clearly many of his business tactics are anti-family--at least for those working families that are trying to pay rent and groceries on what they make at Wal-Mart.

But the broader point is that Christianity is being packaged and sold--just like the latest fad in clothing. You guys have succeeded in making Corporate America and Madison Avenue and Washington political offices aware of your buying power and voting power. As a result, they are doing to Christianity what they have done to ethnic identification. Just as they have tried to sell Native American identity to sell cars, or appropriated urban black youth culture to sell to suburban whites, they are now packaging what you claim is your deepest value--a faith in the transforming power of Jesus Christ--to make money and get votes. "Shop at Wal-Mart because we are Christian like you." "Vote for me, I am just like you." Meanwhile both exploit workers and undermine the very faith that you represent. Can you really see Jesus opening a Wal-Mart over the protests of local businessmen, locking workers inside, mocking women workers?

You guys might really reconsider whether your faith is for sale.