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 ¹constructive engagement,' church leaders are
too often reduced to inconsequential hand-wringing about media
sex and violence, and yuletide clichÍs 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
