The Highly Aggressive Religion of the Global Economy — Unmatched

Adherents of The Market sell its beliefs and benefits worldwide. The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, other global financial institutions, and global corporate chains all spread their influence aggressively throughout the world to proclaim the gospel and make disciples.

• They train their personnel on how to bring the good news to all nations. 
• They commission advertisers to put the good news into symbols, sound-bytes, and irresistible invitations to accept the way of salvation proclaimed by this MultiEarth economic religion. 
• They promise that dedication to The Market will satisfy the deep human longings to improve life, add to self-worth, and be fulfilled. 

The missionary zeal of the governments of the U.S. and other wealthy nations goes unparalleled as they coercively engage poorer nation states to convert, especially if they are strategic in location or abundant in resources. This zealous missionary activity is lumped into and hidden in such words as “globalization,” “spreading democracy,” “exports,” and “market expansion.”

Many managers of corporations, economists, financial advisors, business school faculty, owners of businesses, and business media provide a massive, skilled faculty of education and advanced learning in the religion of The Market.

Advertisers join in through the corporate owned media, instructing all readers, hearers, and viewers in the religious creed of global economic benefits. The training and indoctrination by advertisers is psychologically well researched. They know exactly how to engage the conscious and unconscious desires of consumers. No expense is spared in producing attractive curriculum. Testimonials reinforce their instruction.

This worldwide instruction and indoctrination in Multi Earth economic religion is unmatched by any of the other world religions. 

Shopping Malls and Other Sacred Places

I love the title of this blog entry, but the credit for it all goes to Jon Pahl who wrote the book on it. If you’re already quite aware of the religious worship underway at malls, well and good. If not, consider. Because humans are defined first and foremost as consumers, buying is our primary act of worship. No other ability, interest, or desire that we have is as important to our participation in economic religion as purchasing. Fulfilling our acquisitive desires will improve our lives.

The products available for purchase are the result of human and corporate processes that take nature’s wild capital, extract it as cheaply as possible, and transform it into commodities for sale. It is shopping mall religion’s sacred, sacramental, and transformative process by which the natural world is reshaped for the holy use of accumulating wealth and delivering to humans what we need, desire, or can be talked into.

Sometimes we shop for products online or by going to stores. But malls can take us to a new level. Large malls are excellent sacred places for worshipful rituals of looking, touching, comparing, and buying. Music and restful fountains provide worshipful ambiance, getting us in the mood for the maximum experience.

One of the most important rituals is finding a bargain. Bargain buying floods malls and goes far beyond them. It fulfills our innate rational selves who are intent on getting the best quality for the lowest price, whether the purchase is an upperend house or an item in a 99 cent store. To pay more than someone else did is to have underperformed in this key ritual and may evoke shame.

The moment of payment becomes an especially close interaction with The Market and others gods in the pantheon. There we exchange something of ourselves for something distributed by the deities. Our new purchase can stir feelings of joy and gratitude that impact our sense of purpose, meaning, and self-worth. 

Beyond simpler acts of worship, there’s sacrificial worship. It factors large in the pantheon of the global economy — most notably, the deity, War, who is the protector of the powers that roam Earth seeking resources and markets. War demands the sacrifice of able-bodied men and women. Though controversial, human sacrifice continues to be an important part of economic religion. It is carefully prepared for. When sacrificial deaths happen, they are highly ritualized.

A Table Contrasting Multi Earth and One Earth Worldviews (Part 2)

Sometimes it just helps to see contrasts put into a table. So here’s a table contrasting how religion and the sacred function in both the Multi Earth Worldview and the One Earth Worldview. It adds to the overall contrast posted earlier as Part 1.

For readers who shy away from words like “God,” “religion,” and “sacred,” you will likely still recognize the significance of these contrasts and have your own preferred language to talk about them as you engage in practices expressing one or the other worldview. Please join in and tell me other contrasts that you’d add to this table. You know the saying, “There’s always room for one more at the table.”

Multi Earth Worldview                                                One Earth Worldview

God is believed in, usually as the God or deities of a religious tradition, is restricted to the private sphere; is invoked to address personal needs and bless human endeavors	God is the experience of The One – beyond and behind all religious traditions – inherent in and beyond the evolutionary processes of Earth and Cosmos and seeks co-creativity from all life
Gods of civilization receive daily devotion and are the deities of functional religion	Gods of civilization are relativized to the cosmic God of continuing Creation
Sacred and secular have separate realms; sacred reduced to religious sphere and absent as a living Spirit or Mystery from economics, politics, business, and elsewhere	A deep sense of the sacred so infuses everything, everywhere that even the term “secular” loses meaning; no realm is separate from sacred presence
Religious power of nationalism and economics goes unrecognized and functions uncontained when sacred is confined to realm of religion	Religious power of nationalism and economics is recognized and contained within the greater sacred wonders
The primary revelation of the sacred comes through sacred texts, temples, and priesthoods or teachers	The primary revelation of the sacred comes through the natural world, the interactive, evolutionary processes of continuing Creation
Having more than enough materially is considered a sign of divine blessing; giving back to the community in some ways an act of generosity and, perhaps, spiritual practice	Having more than enough materially is seen as a violation of the creational order, taking what rightfully belongs to others or the entire community of life

What's the Wholeness & Salvation Economic Religion Offers?

Because I mostly say what’s wrong with market logic, it’s good for me to put myself inside that logic and make the most compelling case for it that I can. That’s what I’m doing as I continue to describe the economy as religion. I think about how the economic institutions and rituals serve religious purposes, not merely financial ones; how market logic has a theology all its own. Here, for example, is how I see economic religion offering us wholeness and salvation.

The path to wholeness and salvation in market logic is wealth accumulation. Without accumulating enough to participate in The Market’s activities, one is doomed. To follow any path other than wealth accumulation is heresy, and inevitably, means falling into sin. One testifies to their salvation through their assets and habits such as car, home, smart phone, clothing, investments, and up-to-date technologies; also where we travel, vacation, eat out and with whom. All of these bear witness to being saved. Nevertheless, the path is an anxious one because, unless one has accumulated a lot, working for more is unending. Even after one has been to the altar and been saved, the feelings of insufficiency return. Salvation becomes an unending quest, heavy in effort, light in grace.

Thought Teaser: What's Sin in Market Logic?

When we yield to the temptation to outsmart The Market, believing to know more than The Market, we fall into sin. Then, instead of trusting The Market, we doubt it. Regulating The Market is an example of not trusting The Market. When we intervene in market logic with regulations, we play god. Countries who regulate too much or refuse to open their economy to the rich nations that design the global economy, suffer economic hardship for their heresy of believing they can do it better than The Market.

Conversely, economic success results from following orthodox market logic. Therefore, rich countries rightfully have the authority to arrange the rules for global economic engagement. Their righteousness, conferred by The Market, is displayed by their wealth.

All actions that stray from trusting The Market’s sovereignty to know best are sinful. Disobeying The Market has consequences, as the example above of regulating The Market shows. It triggers economic hardship and loss — the curse of falling from the Edenic state of trust and harmony. Sin leads to social marginalization, even banishment from groups of the faithful. Putting faith in any economic model other than The Market trusts heresy instead of the true way. Poor people and poor countries do not have the right to say what are the best practices to follow because they have strayed from the true way and have become habitual sinners.

How well are you doing with the logic of The Market?

The Market, Mammon, and the Multi Earth Pantheon of Deities

The Market is the supreme deity, a modern Zeus. Mount Wall Street is today’s Mount Olympus. Traits of The Market deity include being sovereign, unfettered, and omnipotent in power. The Market, with its mysterious, “invisible hand,” knows most and best, approaching omniscience. The logic of The Market has reasons of its own. It is self-regulating and knows what is good. When The Market expands, it is embodied as a Bull deity, a golden calf evoking dance and excited, cheering worship. But when The Market contracts, it behaves in the minds of investors like an untamed Bear. It’s best to be cautious with her; leave her alone in her bearish-ways lest she destroy you. 

Another deity of the pantheon, Mammon, is wealth — especially accumulated wealth, the amount one trusts in for security, or the family wealth of one or more previous generations which one is obligated to protect and expand so as to build a financial dynasty of whatever size. Returning it to strengthen the commonwealth, i.e., the economy of the great commons from which much of it came, is as rare as siting a mountain lion in the wild.

Devotion to Mammon extols maximizing profit and accumulating without limits. It is devotion to “More!” without any sense of “Enough!” The devotion often equals what we see in addictive behavior. Publicly-traded corporations have a legal responsibility to their shareholders to serve Mammon. It is within the global activities of The Market where Mammon’s worshippers are blessed or chastised. Loving Mammon motivates one toward “More!” and is a virtue in the marketplace.

Other important deities in the pantheon include Progress, Growth, Profit, Productivity, Consumption, Technology, and War. The divinity of each of these in economic religion becomes known through the unquestioning devotion they are given. In a Multi Earth economy, doubts that these deified entities are for the wellbeing of life or even the good of civilization are rarely heard. All these deities deeply stir the human spirit. We project upon them our own soul desires for more, better, and success. Even peace. As a result, spiritual energy inhabits them. The energy we give them builds and builds until they take on a life of their own. 

William Cavanaugh Says "Functional Religion" Replaced "Idolatry," But ...

At the same conference, where I went public with my conviction that there is such a thing as God’s Economy or the Great Economy after all, I met up with the phrase “functional religion. I attended a session in which William Cavanaugh, from the faculty of St. Thomas University, St. Paul, MN, (since then moved to De Paul, Chicago) spoke about it. In his remarks he said that in a past era he most likely would have used the word “idolatry,” but at the moment the preferred phrase was “functional religion.”

Idolatry sounds just to primitive for us. We flatter ourselves into believing we’ve long ago left behind a culture of idols. Still, “functional religon,” clicked for me. Cavanaugh spoke about how the state engages in functional religion, performing acts ritually and liturgically.

As I heard him describe state religion, my mind was simultaneously translating his words to economic religion. His phrase “functional religion” stamped “Approval” on my belief that going deeper into how the economy functioned religiously was necessary for us to see how to leave behind Multi Earth living.