Buy Less: Live More - a response

I think any campaign like this is going to be caught in the horns of a dilemma that's been troubling Christians for the last 2000-odd years: prophetic witness or engagement in the realities of day-to-day-life?

Overemphasise prophetic witness, and you risk forgetting that the Spirit is always-already active in the world around us. Overemphasise engagement with the world around us, and we lose the specificity of our message.

Now clearly, it's not either/or, it's both/and -- this is the tension that we're called to live in. Luckily, we have the church's year, with its cycle of seasons where different aspects of the gospel come into relief at different times. However, Lent is the "high profile" season -- people of all varieties of Christianity & none talk about 'giving something up for Lent.'

In order to be effective, and in order not to bend the stick too far in one direction, this campaign needs to be part of an overall strategy which emphasises different aspects of the gospel as the year goes on. Is it?

As someone who used to work in retail, and who saw my home town torn apart by the decline of manufacturing in the 1980s, I share Christine's concern about the effects that a major recession would have on many people in many parts of the UK, and no Christian would want to encourage this to happen.

But there is an extremely long tradition within Christianity (maybe someone can say how long) of giving up something for Lent. And, apart from those who grow their own food or who give up something intangible like watching TV, giving up something for lent has surely always meant buying less. So I don't really see how this campaign is that different from traditional Lenten abstinence.

I am glad that Christine raised this because it is important to consider the effects of what we buy and how or where we buy it, whether that be how it effects local businesses, far away producers or those hit by the carbon emissions necessary to transport the goods from there to here. But I don't agree that the campaign is a bad idea, because it feels to me like an expression of traditional Lenten self-denial.

By the way, I also agree with Christine that we all should do more throughout the year to make our shopping have an impact, like asking for Fairtrade products or shunning retailers or products with histories of economic, environmental or human exploitation. Methodists used to refuse sugar because of its links to the slave trade, so there is a long history of thinking about what we buy. The responsibility to shop wisely has not gone away.

I have just seen this article on the Christian Today newsletter.

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/new.cap.money.course.to.turn.tide....

This is the sort of practical help that may well make a difference to people who are in financial trouble. How much more effective than the Methodist campaign,

(Eric - is mangement French for the process of eating? :) )
Our society has built itself on a foundation of "borrow, borrow, borrow." I am forever junking letters from providers who want me to have another credit card, and I have to smile at the disbelief in the voices of the tele-sales people when I tell them, no, I don't have any balances to transfer because I only have this one card, and no, you can't help me reschedule my interest payments because I have never paid interest.

I have said for years that the bubble must burst sooner or later. I fear the US sub-prime crisis may be the beginning of that burst. A house has been built on the sandy base of greed, and it's now beginning to subside. I agree pretty much with Eric - we really need to reign in credit (although I don't think debt is necessarily an evil thing - you'd never buy a house or car without it). I fear however that we're too late, and what the press is calling a "painful readjustment" will in fact mean tragedy and heartache for hundreds of thousands who lose jobs and homes. It's already happening in the US.

If you are in a hole then stop digging!. The threat of recession is closely linked to the amount of personal and national debt in our economy. Then why, why, why is it legal for moneylenders (i.e credit card companies) to encourage more debt? This is blatantly immoral. Money represents work. Borrowing money is to benefit from work done by someone else, for which they will require rewarding by receiving interest. The use of debit cards involves spending our own money, whereas using credit cards involves spending someone else's money. Reneging on repaying our debts is a form of theft.
Credit unions are helping the poorest among us to get out of debt. If Christians really want to act on Kingdom principles they should campaign to prohibit advertising that tempts people into debt and work to promote the habit of saving. The idea that "must have" items should include what we cannot afford needs to be challenged.

There is a serious point about how consumerism is damaging to spiritual and mental wellbeing. By consumerism I mean shopping as leisure activity rather than neccessity (it rates as number one in polls)

See this article on the BBC website

Are we in the UK now living in the 'overdeveloped' world?

Personally I don't think this will change spending habits at all. I have no idea how much has been spent on the campaign but I think it would have been better spent elsewhere.

As someone who used to work in The City of London, I'm neither unabashedly for this campaign nor unabashedly against it either.

My problem in thinking about 'a Christian response to the world economic system' is the complexity of the way the world economy works. We may be clear that our Christian goal is to help everyone in the world to have a basic quality of life. The problem is that, given the way the world economy works, we can have good intentions and the actions we take as a result may have inadvertent negative effects.

For me, the big challenge as a disciple of Christ is the fact that 'the world economic system' provides my culture with much more than it needs whilst people in other parts of the world can barely scrape a living together. I find it problematic that much theology coming out of the States (and I am a US citizen so feel I can legitimately 'American-bash' a bit) not only condones this state of affairs but actively blesses it as God's will. It seems clear to me that the Prophetic tradition in which Jesus stands would have prophets shouting at us and rolling in the mud asking how we can tolerate this system?

The question is, how do you change it and I think that's quite problematic as it would require societal repentance. There is no reason why our economy has to grow every year and I cringe when I hear news reports along the lines of 'Christmas sales were bad this year because they only grew 3%.' It's the expectation of robust growth of the economy every year apart from population growth that, I believe, makes our system inherently exploitative.

Looking at a pink card in front of my other credit cards might help me to think about this at a personal level, but I wonder how many other people will think about this? To be frank, in Methodism, it often seems to be parsimony for the sake of parsimony, not parsimony for the sake of good stewardship.

For me, the campaign might do better to give hard-hitting messages to individuals about how their lives can be blighted by too much spending on credit - particularly on credit cards. So many people now seem to think that spending on credit cards is 'a right' and they don't understand the heavy fees that card companies charge.

I suspect that the double-digit rise in the price of fuel - both automobile and heating fuel - is going to hit the economy a lot harder this spring than a handful of Methodists skipping a restaurant meal.

I certainly have compassion for those in the retail sector who will find themselves unemployed, but I think our capitalistic system needs some serious theological reflection as well.