Editorial: April 2023
Editorial: A City Full of Idols? Being Church in a Consumer Society
JENNIFER BROWN
The question of how the Church should respond to consumerism is
not particularly new. Indeed, if we take a step back from consumerism to consider what might be an appropriate Christian stance on wealth and material possessions, we find that Jesus himself felt the need to address this question for his followers. We see hints in the New Testament texts of what first-century CE society was like, and it appears to be one, not unlike our own, in which some had great wealth and many were poor. Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6 and Luke 12 allows us to consider the possibility that, just as now, there may have been an aspirational attitude towards material possessions and lifestyle, perhaps an envy of the ‘haves’ among the ‘have nots’, alongside a very real concern for just having enough to survive. And so Jesus says to his disciples,
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