The following section is from John Wright’s chapter in Conflicting Allegiances, a book edited by Pastor JOhn Wright and Michael Budde, which includes articles by both men, as well as John Milbank and William Cavanaugh, to name a couple of names recognizable to me. The following quote is large, but gives a very clear picture of the sociological strategy of the modern liberal state we have in America. It was made all thchecked out from NetFlix: Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause. In it he was talking in one context about how modern civilized countries don’t have to use force anymore to maintain the status quo. they can use persuasion in the form of adveritsing to placate and pacify people with consumerism to keep them from caring about real human issues. Now that is an insight from a man who has, of yet, not said much at all about religion (he is Jewish — not that this is why I think he doesn’t talk about religion), but here has identiifed what I think is true for the majority of religious communities and churches in America today. They operate with the agenda of producing “succesful” citizens of the empire, which uses the modern coercive forces of media to shape. It was Chomsky calls “Manufactured Consent”; the strategy of keeping us occupied with things like consumerism and fear to keep the status quo in place, so that the means of continuation of the benefactors of society as we know it will continue to live the lives to which they have been accustomed.

What insights such as this article of John Wright and others who self-identify with the Radical Orthodoxy camp is something which Tony Campolo had made me aware of when I first began listening and reading what he had to say. Campolo is a Sociological with a passion for the role of the church as a change agent and a reflection of the Kingdom of God. He brought me to understand the motivations of those who “manufacture” the things for which we are intended to give full pursuit. This idea, deeply tied to our capitalist. materialistic society, strategizes constanbtly as to the latest , most effcient means of recycling the lates trends and translating this into means of profit. What Pastor John has written here is to show how the church, and specifically the church-related university has fallen into line to become successful producers of the right “product” to keep things going. What we are intended to do about this is to recognize the way we are being played, and band together in this scoiety called church to affirm what we know to be true: that God is in control of history, and there is a Kingdom that is active reality and ultimate end. In that light, the operations of that which seeks to control outside of this reality is the illusion, and the imposter.

More in just a bit. I weant to finsih this chapter “How Many Masters?”

By creating the realm of the private, autonomous individual and then placing religion within this realm, liberal theory separates Christianity from the communal base that renders it viable across time. Such a cultural landscape opens the possibility of the emergence and growth of new religious groups under individual entrepreneurial leadership. As the group grows, however, it must achieve broader social legitimacy if this growth is to cotinue-legitimacy that only the culture can give. A community can achieve this legitimacy by assuming a mediating function in which its members, especially those marginal to the society at large, are mainstreamed into the norms, practices, and institutions of the liberal democratic society. In this way the religious organizations place the individual’s religious commitments within a framework conducive to the liberal society. Religion emerges as a market choice for the private, autonomous individual, a product distinct in some way from its religious institution/provider within a competitive religious free-marketplace.The religious institution that serves the society by supporting society’s ends can enhance its product, and thus its market share, through the added social-economic benefits provided by societal upward mobility that participation in the religious institution cam bring.” In the liberal democratic setting of the U.S., therefore, a church-related university existed as a voluntary association, a mediating organization or civil society social networks that exist “‘outside’ the scope of the state.” ‘