March (Web-only) 2006

ARTICLE TOOLS

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The all-engulfing righteousness of God should be the only real justice we Christians are interested in. Evangelical churches ought to manifest a justice among ourselves that displays the kind of righteousness that can only be God's. This has never been more important as society fragments into its multiple justices and communities. But this has also rarely been more difficult as late capitalism extends its dominion over all manifestations of North American life. Capitalism intrudes upon every living space. North American society imposes enormous capitalist pressures on its inhabitants that impede this kind of community.

So our congregations must work incessantly, paying off larger credit card bills and mortgages on bigger homes. Capitalist competitiveness and consumerism as well as liberal individualism shape us into being wealth accumulators, consumers, and parents who must take every possible produced advantage for our child's growth and development. There is little time for our people to be the body, and so the local church often is reduced to being the distributor of religious goods and services. When we do come together, we come shaped as we are out of capitalism as individuals protecting our interests. We do not come determined first by our citizenship in Christ.

As a result, instead of being communities of God's redeemed economics, many evangelical churches take on the communal characteristics of capitalism in strange ways. In the way evangelical churches organize, we curiously choose elders who are more successful as businessmen and accumulators of wealth than they are capable of giving wisdom and Christ-centered shepherding to the local congregation. We project budgets based upon how many people are actually "giving ...