Speaking on the topic of Christian faith formation Andrew Root, with Charles Taylor as his guide, charted the trajectories of secularism from the medieval period to the present. Prior to the formations of the secular Root said that the church really did not need to think of formation because all of life and culture was shaped by a Christian imaginary. As Christendom shifted through the Enlightenment to secular modernity Christian beliefs became contested and in time all beliefs (including unbelief) became contested leaving personal (un)belief precarious and fragile in our present age.

Root’s account resonated with the experience of those attending and, I think, helped give language, context, and encouragement to those trying to respond to the precarity of faith and the fragmenting of meaning many pastors witness and experience. Over the two days though a lingering concern grew into a clarifying doubt. Root never really talked of secularism except in its effects. In many ways his talk was reminiscent of the late 90s discourse on postmodernism as the incredulity towards metanarratives. Root just sort of left secularism there as a virus destabilizing all authoritative truth claims.

The philosophical project of postmodernism quickly faded both because on a popular level people found ‘authenticity’ to be fine substitute for metanarrative and most thinkers had to acknowledge there remained a metanarrative (think Zizek at the millennium). There remained a universal system of belief and devotion that has continued to expand, convert and create disciples. This world and totalizing religion is (pregnant pause though you know what I am going to say) <jazz hands> CAPITALISM </jazz hands>.

Now naming capitalism can be an easy throwaway response or more charitably we can, with gentle appreciation, nod our heads acknowledging money as a ‘god of the age’. However, very rarely will popular speakers or Christian leaders unequivocally name capitalism as the sovereign of the world taking up the capacities and responsibilities of what prior religions offered. As Phillip Goodchild has so eloquently developed, capitalist economy determines value, directs attention, captures time, makes promises, exacts judgments, etc. The economy is a pious religious system of devotion. The Western Christian trajectory travelling through Jewish supercessionism, Christendom/crusades, colonization into secular capitalism has produced a Greater Commission than could have ever been imagined in which it can increasingly be said the earth and all its inhabitants are his. Capital must grow. This god needs the church only to the extent that it participates. And the truth is that when not actually being the center of power the Western church is quite comfortable receiving the benefits of Rome and Babylon.

Without drifting too far off topic how does this observation potentially change what Root offered? Whereas Root offered no account for the power of present day secularism this account drastically changes when we begin to name capitalism as the sovereign and transcendent power intentionally shaping subjects with fragile beliefs or, put differently, intentionally fragmenting belief to create greater market malleability (everyone is a brand!). When viewed in this manner the symptoms of our age come into even sharper focus.

Root spoke of the present age as having an ethic of authenticity with authority located in the self. This feels true in the manner in which many people express their value whether in local ‘artisanal’ movements or social media personality branding. Most of us know the feeling of lingering nihilism that these forms are meant to stave off or the injustices they are meant to avoid. And yet it remains difficult in popular culture to name this nihilism and injustice clearly, consistently and seriously. All our concerns are quickly taken up with market responses (green washing, branded activism, ethical consumerism, etc.) with growth and expansion continuing through mounting debts and riskier resource extractions. The authority isn’t the self but the authority demands the branding and precarity of the self (anything too fixed like unions or even salaries will not be flexible enough for capital’s change).

The only real resistance to capitalist growth and formation tends to be when Indigenous or black communities interrupt expansion. In Canada, First Nations have been shuffled around from bad to worse land so that the state could build an economic base and capacity. Many of these groups eventually fought back in the courts with little effect (when thinking of the Oka crisis few people are aware of the legal battles that preceded the direct confrontation). Putting their bodies in front of capitalist expansion was literally one of the only expressions of direct counter-formation; the only thing that could get a paused response. Rather than reading these events as apocalyptic ‘signs of the kingdom’ the church and the rest of the culture quickly dismisses these expressions as naively (or annoyingly) ineffective, disrespectful or simply illegal. Since global capitalism has created such a distance (in perception and geography) between resource extraction, conditions of production and the consumer we do not pause much to think of the crimes that went into our legally purchased and possessed lives but will cry bloody murder when unarmed protestors hold up traffic.

Naming a god for our present condition does not make things any easier. In some ways it can easily feed into the type of despair or anxiety already so present. But new opportunities emerge when the situation is clarified in this manner. We can with greater confidence know our enemy and for Christians that is also knowing our idol. When Israel divided after King Solomon and new idols were established in the northern kingdom it was consistently said that the kings of the north now caused the people to sin. The kings had created conditions in which citizens could do not do otherwise than sin. Neoliberalism would have us believe that the only option is to individually choose our way out of any problem (which inevitably puts the blame on us). But perhaps faithfulness is, in part, naming the impossibility of virtue in a given context. This doesn’t mean choice isn’t important but what it can mean is release both from the guilt that is unfairly placed on individuals and release to more fully consider another world, loosening our investments in maintenance of the present which should allow us to more fully align with those already in resistance or those already discarded by the present age.

Root concluded with an appeal to sensitive awareness of how ‘transcendence’ may still be breaking through the present precarity of belief. This was a sympathetic message of care but on its own it is at best a mild sedative in the face of the void (there are worse things!). But transcendence is not the issue, it has never gone away. Transcendence is simply an appeal to the possibility of a realm that can in influence us but which we cannot influence (we are not allowed to consider a world after capitalism). World powers love transcendence because transcendence needs a figure, a form, an analogy, a priest to mediate (mysticism explores some possible alternatives but often when it drifts towards immanence). And once those forms are identified power becomes concentrated and difficult to stop. Christian stability, if we can call it that, comes in ever renewed attentiveness of those sacrificed for the mediators of transcendence. This is inefficient. It requires we stop at times. But there is no Sabbath for capitalism. Rest is loss is sin. Endless devotion is required.

The secular age is as pious an age as there ever has been. Know and name your idol. It is your enemy.