MONDAY FEBRUARY 24 2020 NOEL GATHERING
Gathering Topic: Idolatry, Enchantment and Capitalism
STRANGE GODS: IDOLATRY IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY
by William T. Cavanaugh
MISENCHANTMENT
David Bentley Hart's review of
The Enchantments of Mammon
How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
by Eugene McCarraher
Place and Time: Resurrection Room, Saint Noel Parish
6:30 pm to 7:00 pm Opening comments about the January 2020 Issue and suggestions for a topic for the next meeting.
7:00 pm to 8:15 pm Discussion of articles
Cavanaugh claims the opposite of faith is not secularism but idolatry in new forms, e.g. the nation-state, money and material objects. McCarraher likewise claims that capitalism is not the product of disenchantment from a religious world but another kind of religion. Both see what Hart labels as misenchantment in the midst of goods produced in highly rational ways in a supposedly rational marketplace: what we are really buying are the fake promises of consumerism.
Cavanaugh claims the opposite of faith is not secularism but idolatry in new forms, e.g. the nation-state, money and material objects. McCarraher likewise claims that capitalism is not the product of disenchantment from a religious world but another kind of religion. Both see what Hart labels as misenchantment in the midst of goods produced in highly rational ways in a supposedly rational marketplace: what we are really buying are the fake promises of consumerism.