Consumer culture, the new church

What draws people away from traditional, institutional religion is largely the success of consumer culture — the “stronger form of magic found in the ever-new glow of consumer products (p. 490). As a result, the expressivist revolution (1) “undermined some of the large-scale religious forms of the Age of Mobilization” and (2) “undermined the link between Christian faith and civilizational order” (p. 492). In fact, “where the link between disciplines and civilizational order is broken, but that between Christian faith and the disciplines remains unchallenged, expressivism and the conjoined sexual revolution has alienated many people from the churches” (p. 493).—James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 89