Articles of Faith: Consumerism is a greedy society's religion (not about religion)

By ANTHONY B. ROBINSON

House Minority Leader Boehner, a Republican congressman from Ohio, celebrated the recent passage of the economic stimulus package by saying, "The sooner we get this relief in the hands of the American people, the sooner they can begin to do their job of being good consumers." Your title: "consumer;" your mission: "buy stuff." Echoes of the president's call, amid the crisis of 9/11, to get out and "shop."

The distance between "citizen" and "consumer" is the distance we have traveled. Where "citizen" has a certain dignity, even gravitas, carrying with it notions of responsibility and capacity for decision, "consumer" conjures something far more passive, lacking either dignity or responsibility, save responsibility to one's self and for getting the best deal.

Yet "consumer" has steadily infiltrated our language and become our self-designation and default definition of what it means to be a person. Group Health Cooperative, of which I am a member, does not speak of us as either patients or members, but as consumers. We are health care consumers. Higher education mutes talk of the educated person in favor of consumers of educational services and getting the best value for your education dollar. Churches gear up for "church shoppers," religious consumers.

The subtext of cultural change in the past 30 years has been the way the market has seeped into every sector of life and come to define how we think of who we are and what we do. We are consumers, feeding the great insatiable maw of the consumer economy.

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It has an altar in every home: the television, through which the spectacle of consumption is enacted on the grandest scale. We consume images of other people consuming. Most channels now consist of 24-hour advertising. The programs are covert ads, the ads all try to be mini-programs. Christmas and the Superbowl are the most popular holidays.

It has eaten up much of the traditional religions, colonizing many of the neo-Christian sects with the ideology that one's wealth and ability to consume are evidence of membership in the elect. (I should note it's a toss up whether I prefer Santa the gift giver to a man tortured to death on a cross, however.)