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

Beaudoin Fordham University, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580512089 ISBN 13: 9781580512084

Publisher: Sheed & Ward, 2006

Synopsis

Americans search for identity through a paradoxical pair of passions: spirituality and consumerism. On the one hand, we participate in religion or practice spirituality and on the other hand we are keen consumers. But, as Tom Beaudoin's Consuming Faith makes clear, if we truly seek to put our spirituality into practice, we must integrate who we are with what we buy. How are we linked to the rest of the world through our purchases? What does faith have to do with what we buy? With a new updated preface by the author, this paperback edition invites us to think about how our purchases affect who we are as individuals and as members of a global community.

About this title

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 In Due Season: A Catholic Life, and 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, Harvard Kennedy School)

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. (The 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 of Presbyterian Women)

About this edition

• Publisher: Sheed & Ward
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1580512089
• ISBN 13: 9781580512084
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 152