Commodified Communion
Eucharist, Consumer Culture, and the Practice of Everyday Life

Antonio Eduardo Alonso (Author)

9780823294121

Hardback, published 1 June 2021

200 pages, 4 b/w illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.452 kg

WINNER, 2021 HTI BOOK PRIZE

Resist! This exhortation animates a remarkable range of theological reflection on consumer culture in the United States. And for many theologians, the source and summit of Christian cultural resistance is the Eucharist. In Commodified Communion, Antonio Eduardo Alonso calls into question this dominant mode of theological reflection on contemporary consumerism. Reducing the work of theology to resistance and centering Christian hope in a Eucharist that might better support it, he argues, undermines our ability to talk about the activity of God within a consumer culture. By reframing the question in terms of God's activity in and in spite of consumer culture, this book offers a lived theological account of consumer culture that recognizes not only its deceptions but also traces of truth in its broken promises and fallen hopes.

Introduction 1
The Praise of Camp at My Abuela's Altarcito 9
1 The Resistance 17
Singing about a (Liturgical) Revolution 45
2 Listening for the Cry in a Consumer Culture 53
Salvation in the Shape of an Apple 78
3 The Limits of Eucharistic Resistance 86
Communion Commodified 107
4 Confession, Hope, and Justice in a Commodified World 115
Acknowledgments 129
Notes 133
Index 181