Budde, Michael and Robert Brimlow. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press,
2002. 191 pp. $22.99 (US). ISBN: 1587430266.
[1] When Jesus told his followers that it would be impossible to
serve both God and mammon, he probably did not foresee that some day
a book titled Jesus CEO would urge its readers to distill from
His message an "Omega management style." But perhaps he
who drove the moneychangers from the Temple would not have been surprised.
Budde and Brimlow - both of whom are lay Catholics, college professors,
and members of the interdenominational Ekklesia Project - bring new
force and immediacy to Jesus' warning in their critique of what they
call "the chaplaincy church."
[2] The chaplaincy metaphor describes a church that implicitly supports
the ideological underpinnings of capitalist society. It never questions
the profit motive, or the power relations instituted through corporate
models. Instead, it offers "uplift and consolation" to those
who struggle under the present economic and social arrangements, and
bends scriptural models and imperatives to the dictates of the market
system. The authors develop an analysis of how contemporary pressures
of globalization and corporate downsizing have resulted in the cooptation
of many American churches into a revival of a nationalistic civil
religion. Such civil religion undercuts the prophetic influence of
the Christian gospel in favor of a vague "spirituality."
According to the authors, the historical Christian message of sanctification,
repentance, and communal interest transforms into an ethic of conformity,
consumerism, and axiomatic respect for private property. While this
new variant of civil religion offers individuals a vague sense of
transcendent meaning, that meaning is too often a mystification that
keeps them from recognizing the forces and values that are truly shaping
their lives.
[3] The book's chapters develop like a mosaic, providing examples
of the different ways in which segments of the Christian church are
becoming increasingly tainted with the ideologies and practices of
the secular market system. The authors' first target is the emerging
trend of "corporate spirituality." Large corporations provide
this through services and programs designed to strengthen their employees'
"self-affirmation" and sense of vocation within the company.
The authors convincingly explain that "beneath the lofty aims
of the corporate spirituality movement lives capitalism's enduring
need to maximize labor's output at the lowest possible cost"
(34). They further state that "the firm's interest in employee
spirituality is derivative from its more fundamental view of employees
as resources to be exploited in the most efficient ways possible"
(35).
[4] Given the authors' Catholic allegiances, it is not surprising
that their most detailed and intellectually challenging analysis would
be directed towards that increasingly embattled body of believers.
Their dissection of Pope John Paul II's 1991 encyclical, Centesimus
Annus, is a profound exploration of the present Pope's seeming
capitulation to Lockean individualism which they see as the foundation
of the capitalist ethic. But this analysis will probably leave many
Protestant readers cold. Moreover, the recent abuse scandals (which
came to full light after this book went to press) may cause the authors'
concerns to be pushed even towards the rear of the church hierarchy's
consciousness.
[5] The strongest sections of the book are set pieces that could
easily stand on their own. The chapter on how corporate models are
taking over the properly religious business of burying people should
be required reading for anyone who is starting to make these kinds
of preparations. A chapter on spiritual formation is enlivened by
its reference to neo-Marxist theory, and by the use of relevant statistics
on media use. This particular chapter struck me as a piercingly prophetic
word on the danger of the church becoming just another cog in the
"culture industry." As the authors explain:
In the cultural ecology of contemporary capitalism - with its nonstop
flow of images, symbols, sounds, and attractions - Christian formation
faces daunting new obstacles that most church leaders scarcely acknowledge.
Because most seek to be full participants in American capitalism and
society, in which radical or structural critique is considered beyond
the bounds of Ôconstructive engagement,' church leaders are too often
reduced to inconsequential hand-wringing about media sex and violence,
and yuletide clichŽs about consumerism (75).
[6] In the final chapter ("Toward an Economics of Discipleship:
The Church as Oikos"), the authors depart from critique
to give practical suggestions for how individual churches might begin
to model a radical economy based on the Sermon on the Mount. Budde
and Brimlow's interpretation of this passage of scripture is the most
inspiring and challenging treatment I have read of it since Dietrich
Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. It sees the church as
truly being able to practically embody an alternative and prophetic
society.
[7] Overall, Christianity Incorporated is an eloquent, persuasive,
and (for me, as a Christian) disturbing picture of the church's drift
towards a blinding worldliness. While some readers may be put off
by the Social Gospel leanings of the authors, they should try to see
this within Bidde and Brimlow's larger concern - that the church not
lose its ability to differentiate between bottom-line corporatism
and the otherworldly gospel message it is "called out" to
proclaim.
Michael Van Dyke
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
vandykem@msu.edu
