{"id":2423,"date":"2011-11-23T08:18:13","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T13:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/?p=2423"},"modified":"2011-11-23T08:18:13","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T13:18:13","slug":"is-there-a-christian-ethic-of-consumption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/is-there-a-christian-ethic-of-consumption","title":{"rendered":"Is there a Christian ethic of consumption?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/HdThwRLjiWE\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Black Friday is now a bigger holiday than Thanksgiving Day.\u00a0 The<em> Friday After Thanksgiving<\/em> has become a &#8220;National Shopping Holiday.&#8221; And now it starts even earlier, with <a href=\"http:\/\/finance.yahoo.com\/news\/wal-mart-black-friday-circular-102300150.html\" target=\"_blank\">many major chain stores like Wal-Mart and Target<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.greatlakescrossingoutlets.com\/blackfriday\" target=\"_blank\">major malls opening the evening of Thanksgiving<\/a> and remaining open through Friday night. And how many shoppers will be trampled in this year&#8217;s frenzy to be the first to grab this year&#8217;s must-have discounted junk? And how many employees will be forced to leave their family Thanksgiving to serve the consumption demands of today&#8217;s impatient consumer?<\/p>\n<p>What have we become? What does our insatiable appetite for consumption say about us as human beings, but more importantly, as <em>Chistians<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/qconline.com\/archives\/qco\/display.php?id=570167\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Laura Hartman<\/a> helps us formulate a coherent Christian ethic of consumption, imposing order on the debate by dividing it into four imperatives: Christians are to consume in ways that avoid sin, embrace creation, love one&#8217;s neighbor, and envision the future. An adequate ethics of consumption, she argues, must include all four considerations as tools for discernment, even when they seem to contradict one another. Her book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oup.com\/us\/catalog\/general\/subject\/Economics\/Environmental\/?view=usa&amp;ci=9780199746422\" target=\"_blank\">The Christian Consumer: Living Faithfully in a Fragile World<\/a>, includes discussions of Christian practices such as fasting, gratitude, solidarity, gift-giving, Sabbath-keeping, and the Eucharist. Using exemplars from the Christian tradition and practical examples from everyday life, <em>The Christian Consumer<\/em> offers a thoughtful guide to ethical consumption.<\/p>\n<p>Paul speaks with Dr. Laura Hartman on Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 4:40 pm ET.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black Friday is now a bigger holiday than Thanksgiving Day.\u00a0 The Friday After Thanksgiving has become a &#8220;National Shopping Holiday.&#8221; And now it starts even earlier, with many major chain stores like Wal-Mart and Target, and major malls opening the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/is-there-a-christian-ethic-of-consumption\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2424,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions\/2424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}