Too often, the corrupting effects of neoliberal capitalism upon worship are the waters we swim in--ubiquitous but unnoticed. Many scholars have explored how competing stories or cultural liturgies have malformed Christian worship and discipleship. However, save consumerism, the ways in which neoliberal forms of capitalism and its central values--individualism, competition, infinite growth, and an entrepreneurial spirit--have influenced the doxological life of the church have largely been overlooked.
David Bjorlin's Attuned to Christ fills this lacuna by examining five themes central to Christian worship--place, time, community, attention, and imagination--and demonstrating the ways neoliberal capitalism has malformed these goods in both evangelical and mainline worship. We are not, however, left defenseless against the totalizing effects of neoliberalism. Bjorlin demonstrates that our shared tradition also offers liturgical practices that can counter these effects and help us imagine more faithful ways of being in the world.
Bjorlin leavens his critique of how neoliberalism has malformed our worship with concrete ways we might reform our practices, both within and outside church walls. Each chapter offers two liturgical practices and shows how they not only reform worship but also "systematically extend" the goods of the practice into our common life. Further, we also need personal and communal rituals outside the church and its liturgy that can resonate with and strengthen these liturgical practices for a more holistic--if always partial and contingent--transformation. Thus, each chapter's pair of liturgical practices is augmented with two suggested extra-ecclesial practices. Liturgical scholars and worship practitioners alike will find freedom in this book to imagine and live our lives of faith more fully.
