Abercrombie Priests and Hollister Gods

Last night I read Prof. John Pahl's article The Desire to Acquire: Or, Why Shopping Malls are Sites of Religious Violence. It's a great read, full of great photos and citations, encapsulated by a great quote from Slavoj Zizek that basically makes the claim that as the gap between beauty and trash diminishes, what we view as holy or good will ultimately be revealed "to be nothing but a piece of shit" (Gotta love that line). Pahl goes on to convincingly argue how shopping malls have become modern day religious sites, making shoppers into postmodern pilgrims. The problem, of course, is that their god is not only an idol (my words), but is worthless garbage.

So what's the problem?

• "Matter is evacuated of its materiality and desire displaced onto and condensed within an object contained within the confines of the mall."
• "The mall thus becomes a parody or exaggeration of real presence, a hyper-real compression of the spontaneity and contingency that any real presence suggests, in what is in fact a micro-managed and carefully controlled utopian project.
• "Malls disorient visitors to trigger desire, using natural and religious symbols to effect the function of a labyrinth, and then reorient pilgrims toward the fulfillment of desire through the acquisition of an enchanted commodity or experience."

In other words, the mall is a utopia just like the utopias you read about in books likeThe Giver, Animal Farm, 1984, or see in our own world history constantly. Something temporary, that will soon break or become obsolete, is given spiritual status. Clothes, video games, etc become gods, while mall employees and models become our priests. The only problem, of course, is that none of this provides any real fulfillment.

If truth is now nothing but a commodity, we as the church have a lot to figure out. And if we have commodified Jesus to make him into just another product, we have even more to figure out! I'm not just talking about cheap products that are sold to make a buck off of the living Christ, but about those of us who try to get others to buy into the happy-Jesus who does lots of neat stuff for you (fixes your problems, gets you into heaven) but never calls anybody to die to themselves. Jesus has become for us just one more god among the gods. No wonder, then, we see so many people in our country who say the prayer and get excited about their faith, only to fade in the coming days, weeks, or months. Like any product, we get bored with our commodified Jesus when he is surpassed by new, shinier products.

The typical answer that the Western church has provided up to this point has been to advertise harder, to prove that this product is worth keeping around by constantly repackaging it. We get the rebel Jesus, the cool Jesus, the Republican Jesus, etc. We advertise him on billboards, put his face on toys, talk about him on TV. All of this work has, of course, done nothing but devalue Jesus. He is now, in America, another commodity, thrown into the garbage pile of everything else worshipped in our McChurches.

So what's to be done? Here's some ideas I had while reading and writing and they are purely practical rather than theoretical. They are things I would like to do with my youth ministry students, or even just any American who I could get to come along:

1. I would love to have my students walk a labyrinth that was full of verses, prayers and questions based on what Jesus and the rest of the Bible said about money and possessions. Then I would have them follow a mapped-out course through the mall that was very labryinth-like, and have to think through those same prayers, verses and questions.
2. Have all of my students write a list (like a birthday/Christmas list) of things they want. Then I give them a second piece of paper and they spend one hour walking the mall and writing down everything they want. Afterwards, we meet and debrief the differences between the two lists.
3. Walk with a homeless man through the mall and get his feedback on what he thinks when he sees the people, the stores, the advertising, etc. Also, they would get to see how quickly the man gets kicked-out of the mall, hopefully alerting them to the fact that there are no homeless people in malls because malls are private property and they do discriminate.
4. Take students through the mall and interview them in front of different posters with models on them and ask them how they feel about themselves at that moment.

May the Abercrombie priests be exposed as the idolatrous liars they are, and may the Hollister gods be cast down from on high.

Peace,

Matt