Consuming Faith: Integrating Who We Are with What We Buy - Hardcover

Beaudoin, Tom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1580511384 ISBN 13: 9781580511384

Publisher: Sheed & Ward, 2003

Synopsis

Tom Beaudoin's Consuming Faith presents key questions about attempting to put our spirituality into practice by integrating who we are with what we buy Where do these products come from? Who made them and in what conditions do they work? How does what I buy affect others? What does my faith have to do with what I buy? When is enough, enough? Today, it is more important than ever to pay attention to our economic spirituality. Visit our website for sample chapters!

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Beaudoin teaches religious studies at Santa Clara University. He is the author of Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X.

Review:

[Consuming Faith] may play a critical role in helping to shape the theological agenda...In an accessible style sure to have wide appeal, Tom Beaudoin argues for an economic spirituality. Beaudoin helps us understand how the modern economy shapes our imaginations and elicits our commitments. (The Christian Century )

Economic spirituality? Yes, of course. And now with Consuming Faith, we have an examination of conscience about what we wear, eat and watch. You'll never look at a logo in quite the same way again. (Paul Wilkes, Author of The Seven Secrets of Successful Catholics )

Consuming Faith has the great merit to offer paths towards a realistic spirituality for our consumer society—far from naiveté, moralizing, or demonizing. Tom Beaudoin's call for a responsible attitude in buying and consuming is rooted in his deep concern for the inalienable dignity of all human beings which transcends all economic categories. Although Beaudoin calls for a "spiritual indifference to numbers," I wish his new book a large sales success! (Professor Hans Küng, President, Global Ethic Foundation )

Over the past ten years, writers of faith have reengaged the ancient question of God and Mammon, what is owed God and what is owed to Rome. From Harvey Cox and Ron Sider, to Robert Wuthnow and Jim Wallis, the pressing questions are not only about the just distribution of income and wealth, but the impact of pervasive consumerism on human identity and relations. Tom Beaudoin has advanced that debate with a profound yet accessible reflection on our "branded" culture and the alternatives available to it. Consuming Faith invites us to live life anew, freed of the golden chains which hold so many prisoners. This is a timely, compelling book that deserves a wide audience and debate. (Richard Parker, Lecturer in Public Policy and Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Univer )

Mr. Beaudoin deals honestly with the nasty little secret behind the branding culture. Although Mr. Beaudoin is critical of the economic strategies corporations adopt to remain competitive, this is not an anti-corporation rant. It is a call to faithful living in North America. (Dallas Morning News )

A hard-hitting and ethically provocative book that deserves a wide-reading. (Spirituality and Health )

In an age of increasing globalization, where a purchase puts one in contact with people from China to El Salvador (a truly catholic experience), Consuming Faith calls us to a greater sense of awareness and responsibility as to what we buy and consume. (St. Anthony Messenger )

He does help the reader understand the theological and ethical issues involved in the disconnect between those who make the products and those who consume them. (Patriot News )

Beaudoin's first book, Virtual Faith, alerted many readers to the 30-something Catholic's gift for language, appreciation of material culture's spiritual significance and theological acumen. In this book he turns his attention to a topic he confesses he had previously overlooked: the role of economics in the branded world in which young people live, move and have their being...Beaudoin has once again put an understudied topic on the Christian agenda. (Publishers Weekly )

The author makes an irrefutable case for how economic choices are part of everyday spirituality. (Horizons: The Magazine For Presbyterian Women )

About this edition

• Publisher: Sheed & Ward
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1580511384
• ISBN 13: 9781580511384
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 121