August 21, 2008

I am blogging from a new, undisclosed location as of today. Very interesting and significant.

I just finished a book by an author new to me: Being Consumed by William T. Cavanaugh. I am waiting for inter-library loan to secure me two of his other books- Torture and Eucharist and Theopolitical Imagination.

To get the most critical comment out of the way – I wonder if the book is cobbled together from previously written unconnected pieces? It has that feel. That being said this book is an important contribution to the theological critique of capitalism or, as I prefer to call it, neoliberalism.

Maybe there are some Western Christians who think our modern economy is independent of theology, ideology, or history. Either it is ahistorical or is a natural organism evolving according to natural law. Neoliberal-capitalism, the free market, the ability to purchase anything you can afford - but preferably cheap stuff - that you can tire of and discard, then go out and purchase more of it is the natural way of the world; how God intended it. Can’t everybody do this? Doesn’t everybody want to do this? Isn’t this the very definition of human freedom? Cavanaugh doesn’t think so.