In chapter one of his current dissertation work at Kings College in London, Jason Clark explores the nature and relationship of Evangelicalism with capitalists markets. Part of that work involves a description of the relationship between the emerging markets and the evangelical Christian identity. Jason commenting on such a relationship notes, “The ‘extrinsic forces of social reality and the intrinsic appeal of the evangelical message came together’. Evangelicals through the use of print capitalism as ‘imagined communities’ were able to bring the necessary psychological and social resources to people struggling to form identities within emerging capitalist market society. The continued forces of globalization, migration, social mobility and competition in the market place suggests that it is increasingly ‘normal’ for people within a Western capitalist market context to ‘choose’ their identity.” (39-40) Thus Evangelicals used the available media to provide an “Evangelical story” (memoirs and conversion narratives) that helps people to form and articulate their Christian identity.
Jason goes on to highlight how the rise of voluntarism and the new freedoms that the market society offers people the possibility of choosing their commitments. He notes that the “Population growth, the huge imperial expansion of the British Empire, and communication and commerce went ‘hand in hand’. There was an explosion in human agency that emerged during this societal change, first given the descriptor ‘individualism’ by Alexis de Tocqueville to identify some of what he saw on a visit to America in the 1830s.” (40). This “explosion in human agency” made it possible for people to choose their commitments including their religious ones.
Since Evangelicalism did not shy away from using market methods to convey its message and people became increasingly empowered to shape their own identity this new social situation has far reaching implications. For example, market mediums such as print media were able to take on the role of spiritual formation apart from the church community. Print media became affordable and people were able to consume such literature on their own. The Christian identity formation process that once clearly belonged to the church had become abstracted through the use of print media. The socio logic of this is that church as an identity giving community can now be replaced by print media. Thus in essence it becomes possible to consume Christianity and to be formed in one’s identity apart from the church – the body of Christ. The problem with this is that Christ intended us to be part of the body of Christ – there is no lone ranger Christianity in the bible.
Where this human agency is increased within the market society very soon problems arise where the church is only one commodity among many to be consumed and is viewed as optional. Jason notes some of this issue when he writes: “Yet we might see in voluntarism most supremely issues of agency that Evangelicals faced regarding culture. With the rise in income and increased leisure time, the Evangelical church came into conflict with the newly emerging leisured classes. It was a short step from choosing one’s form of church life freely to the relativisation of church within civil society as nothing more than a club and society. With all the emerging choices for leisure, church began to be something in which people freely chose not to participate.” (41) If church and Christian identity is conceived through a “market logic” it soon can be replaced by that same logic. Jason writes, “The Evangelical church’s voluntarist nature, which had been its strength in response to the market societies in which it had found itself, thus became the means by which it was then discarded through ongoing consumer choice” (41-42).
In Jason’s most telling statement on Evangelical ecclesiology he writes: “Whereas inherited forms of church had within them certain ecclesiologies, Evangelicalism had only the logic of the market for its relational organization, and no determinate social structure. A flexible approach to ecclesiology, in which the form of church is allowed to take its logic from the new market contexts in which Evangelicals found themselves, can be seen with Whitefield’s claim that ‘it was best to preach the new birth, and the power of godliness, and not to insist so much on the form: for people would never be brought to one mind as to that; nor did Jesus Christ ever intend it.’” (45-46).
Far from thinking that Evangelicalism is a lost cause and that Evangelical ecclesiology is hopelessly captive to the market logic Jason views Evangelicalism’s relationship to the market as both symbiotic to capitalism and a countermovement. In his dissertation he hopes to define a clearer ecclesial logic to counter the socio logic of the capitalist markets. Rather than envisioning Evangelicalism apart from capitalism or fully accommodated to it Jason is working on formulating a via media. What is needed is “a via media that offers an understanding of Evangelical Christianity better nuanced with regard to its relationship with capitalist markets” and a clearer formulation of an evangelical ecclesiology.
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