This is the third part in the series Meditations on Rousseau. 

''Ancient Political thinkers incessantly talked about morals and virtue, those of our time talk only of business and money.''

How does the above statement relate to the Church in America?  Althought the ball is often dropped in isolated incidents, on the whole the American church does talk about morals and virtue a lot, though the definition of morality and virtue is heavily contested, as the many denominational shake-ups are continuing to show.

The American church does talk about business and money incessantly though. 

The business aspect often concerns the local church as a business participating in the capitalistic, free-market for souls.  Increasingly, many churches in the umbrellas of evangelicalism and pentacostalism have turned the role of elder into the role of director, as in Board of Directors.  The number of business pastor or executive pastor hires in the last ten years attests to the drive to make the church a business.  Parallel to the list of ways fish die in Richard Brautigan's stirring short work, ''Trout Death by Port Wine,''  the ways to ''do'' church have been contemplated and tallied up by churches for centuries, but recently a new way to ''do'' church is the free-market model based off of laizze-faire capitalism.  Let the record show:

Church Marketing 101: Preparing Your Church for Greater Growth
Go Big: Lead Your Church to Explosive Growth
Ministry Marketing Made Easy: A Practical Guide To Marketing Your Church Message
The New Context for Ministry: The Impact of the New Economy on Your Church
Marketing Your Church: Concepts and Strategies
Marketing Your Church to the Community
One Minute Stewardship Sermons
The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy
Ask, Thank, Tell: Improving Stewardship Ministry in Your Congregation
Marketing for Congregations: Choosing to Serve People More Effectively
How to Increase Giving in Your Church

And my personal favorite:

End-Time Finance: God's Guide for You, Your Business, Your Church and Your Nation

Now caring about the finances and growth of your church is not a bad thing per se, but it often supersedes reliance on God.  The church is encouraging itself to not rely as heavily on God for needs and growth but on market-based formulas, statistics, demographics, and sociology to turn local churches into super efficient, corporate run machine that does not need to think about their local community, only about applying abstract Dilbert-esque business babble to the Body of Christ.   The One-minute stewardship sermon and sought after explosive growth leads to one thing only: spiritual consumerism. 

The darkest and cruelest nature of spritual consumerism is the replacement of good works-of-faith (as in The Epistle of James) with consumption to meet spiritual needs.  If you are not feeling spiritual you can buy Prayer of Jabez or Joel Olsteen and get filled again, all because someone has done the work for you and you just need to follow these three steps (how many sermons are this way as well?).  The local church is teaching spirituality is consumption---it takes no effort, just more consumption.

And yet, coming from the evangelical circles I ran in for so long, how is one to ''do'' church without thinking of it at least sometimes in the terms of our current American politics: business and money?