Timothy BRUNK. The Sacraments and Consumer Culture. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2020. Pp. xvi + 212. $ 24.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-8508-2. Reviewed by Benjamin J. BROWN, Lourdes University, Sylvania, OH 43560.

 

Consumerism is the air we breathe, enveloping and influencing us in often invisible ways.  Timothy Brunk draws on some of the best scholarship on consumer culture (Vincent Miller, William Cavanaugh, Aidan Kavanagh, and James K. A. Smith, among others) to analyze both how it changes our view and practice of the sacraments, and also how the sacraments provide a counter-culture that corrects consumerism’s distortions and some ways in which each can do so even better.

After a brief introduction, each of seven chapters is dedicated to one of the sacraments.  Brunk looks at each in context, including a selective history of the sacrament and data regarding contemporary practices, such as the decrease in participation in Reconciliation over the last several decades.

Throughout the chapters various aspects of consumerism are developed.  It is characterized by abstraction, decontextualization, and dislocation; everything can be transplanted into a different context and/or broken into pieces for individual sale and use by those who have no connection to a thing’s origin or meaning.  The individual is supreme, in her freedom capable of bestowing meaning on things or using them for her purposes, regardless of any communal, historical, or broader context.  Products are valued for their malleability, being easily used for individual ends with a minimum of effort, knowledge, or commitment on the part of the purchaser.  The consumer paradigm is the monetary transaction; through payment one obtains possession and the right to do what one wants with the purchased item.  In this process, one comes to fashion one’s identity through one’s possessions (branding and self-branding), an identity constantly in flux according to the sovereign will of the consumer through distinct acts that lack continuity or grounding in anything deeper.

The sacraments, on the other hand, are fundamentally communal activities within a broader Christian life that demands commitment, self-gift, and the discovery of one’s identity in God.  That is, they are fundamentally anti-consumerist.  Baptism, for example, involves incorporation into Christ, the Trinity, and the Church (community vs. individualism; context and tradition); realizing one’s identity as and receiving the gift of being a child of God (identity received as gift rather than constructed through effort/possessions); and promises (obedience to something greater than oneself and commitment vs. individual autonomy to use, discard, and move on).

However, there are ways in which their celebration, predictably, has been influenced by consumer culture, which tends to be really good at assimilating things into its own likeness.  All of the sacraments appear as discrete things that one “gets”, as graces accumulated, and can be turned into a purchasing system.  We can treat the Eucharist as another product to be obtained rather than part of a life lived in communion with God and extending beyond the church walls in continuity with a life lived holistically.  First communion celebrations too easily focus attention on the child and become focused on dress, appearance, parties, and gifts.  Brunk mentions a Rolls Royce and red carpet for one young man’s arrival.

Brunk also offers suggestions for how we can better resist commodification of each sacrament and create a counter-culture through the sacrament.  He proposes recovering ancient practices that are explicitly contra-consumption, such as fasting associated with Confirmation and almsgiving with Reconciliation.  Various prayers have been and can still be strengthened, such as the newly added epiclesis in the marriage blessing or including reconciliation with the church instead of just God in the formula of absolution.  Brunk also argues that all of the sacraments are better celebrated in a communal, Eucharistic context, even “private” confession. 

He astutely argues that we need a broader and deeper formation process integrated into family and parish life from a young age in order to combat the dis-integration of consumerism.  Yet the broader formation of an earlier era was itself largely dismantled by consumerism to begin with, suggesting that the task of countering consumerism is enormous.  However, it begins with understanding, and this book is a welcome step forward in that regard.  And it continues with embodying our new understanding in each area of life, for which Brunk offers good suggestions regarding one important area.  What he has done for the sacraments, we need also for numerous other subjects, and I hope many will follow his lead.