Proposal Summary
Shopping: Everyday Practices and Christian Faith
Michelle Maldonado
University of Miami
Summary
Shopping will focus on the practice of shopping and its relationship to Christian spirituality. This short book is situated in a larger series entitled Everyday Practices and Christian Faith, which will be published by Fortress Press. The goal of the project is to examine how our everyday life is shaped by our Christian spirituality. Contrary to an understanding that sees Christian spirituality as an isolated aspect of one’s life that occurs in explicitly religious settings, an emphasis on everyday practices demonstrates the manner in which our spirituality saturates our lives. Shopping will examine the manner in which consumerism, materialism, and globalization intersect in the act of purchasing goods. The focus is on how we, as Christians, should understand our relationship to shopping in light of the Christian message. The first section of Shopping will give an overview of U.S. consumerism, debt, and the manner in which materialism has come to mark us as a capitalist society. This “thick description” of the practice of shopping will contextualize our everyday acts of consumerism in light of the global economy. The book’s second section will examine various Christian responses to shopping. I will draw from three dimensions of the Christian tradition: Scripture, the Catholic Social Tradition, and contemporary Christian social justice movements that center on this theme. In my final section I will propose a constructive reconfiguration of the practice of shopping. How can we understand shopping in light of the Christian responses explored in the previous section? What does it mean to be a Christian consumer in this globalized world? What are the implications for Christian theology and spirituality if we take seriously the everyday practice of shopping? These are some of the questions I will address in this final, concluding section.
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