community vs. consumerism - ruminations on the suburban christian

I bought Albert Hsu's The Suburban Christian: Finding Spiritual Vitality in the Land of Plenty on a whim from The Archives Bookshop in Pasadena, CA, as I was simply looking for anything even casually related to my practicum so I could put together a bibliography to meet my academic requirements. The book also seemed like it would fit in well with a one-week class I took before I left for Canada called "Encountering the City," which focused on urban mission and ethnographic research. For something I purchased more or less based on their titles alone, I was amazed at how interesting and useful it was. Sometimes, I guess you can judge a book by its cover.


Albert Hsu brings up the interesting notion that suburban living represents a spiritual quest, a theme that incidentally was often referenced in my "Encountering the City" class. He suggests that the development of suburbia represents a spiritual quest on the part of its inhabitants: the never-ending pursuit of security, financial stability, community, a place to raise the kids, and so on - it’s all an expression of the "American Dream," with a nice house surrounded by a picket fence replacing the rural country homestead. The dream is a place that you personally own where you live that you don't have to share it with anyone. This is underscored by one of the more shocking asides I've stumbled across in any book:

"In the 1950s individualistic single-family houses were seen as the American antidote to communism. Communal housing was seen as suspicious and a dangerous step toward the loss of individual identity and freedom. So suburban developers and architects encouraged individualistic homeownership as an expression of American freedom and one way to fight the Cold War." (p. 39)

Wow. I might point out how ridiculous and reactionary this was, but weren't we encouraged to do our patriotic duty and go out and spend lots of money to reinvigorate the economy in the wake of 9/11? Oops, now I'm getting political. Moving on...

Anyway, suburbs are basically defined by two philosophies: consumerism and isolationism. It is functionally impossible to live in a suburban area and be self-sufficient - malls, strip centers, restaurants, and so on define the suburban landscape, whether you are in Mississauga, Pasadena (the Houston one) or Pasadena (the Los Angeles one). It is also rare to know your neighbors or interact with the local community much at all. This is why we have "commuter churches" where almost all of the members drive from other parts of the city and involvement with the local setting is slim if present at all. With personal cars and nearby freeways (not to mention cell phones and internet access to keep in touch with those who may be physically distant), why bother knowing the people physically close to you?

Hsu makes a wide variety of points that are still running through my mind, but one that has been encountering me during my practicum is the role of immigrant communities in shaping the suburban landscape. Speaking of how different ethnic and immigrant groups change the complexion of typically white suburbs due their frequently different living patterns, Hsu observes:

"Immigrant families with multigenerational households, including aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and other relatives, demonstrate family values and identity not often seen in typical (white) American families, where relatives beyond the nuclear family rarely live under one roof. [...] Rather than asking immigrant families to conform to fragmented, isolationist Western models of suburban family life, it would be a collective benefit to our suburban status quo to be more accommodating to multigenerational and extended families. Such healthy cultural diversity has the potential of invigorating our communities with more dynamic ways of civic and communal life." (p. 43-44)

This strikes me because these are the housing patterns I have observed amongst the Filipino families I am encountering here in Canada. I am living with a family whose house is home to a mother and father, grandmother, one son, two daughters and a son-in-law. More than that, in this house and others I have visited it is common and normal to have visitors drop in unannounced or with little warning, sometimes spend the night, share food, and so on. The idea of "this is my house" appears to be conspicuously absent.

Being an introverted, private person (and one with a white American cultural background), this is not the kind of living situation where I feel most comfortable. But I think I have something to learn about being welcoming and understanding community. I may never live in a multigenerational home or have a proverbial revolving door of residents in my home, but I can learn to practice some of these principles. Another area where I am seeing this in Mississauga is in the role of house churches, where the communal expression of faith is not limited to a foreign building on Sunday morning, but is rather part of the DNA of the community, being shared between the people of the church in their own homes. I experienced this aspect of counter-cultural Christian living some with my church in Brownwood, where small groups were much more important to my weekly worship than attending Sunday service. That openness can go a long way to break down the isolationist, consumerist lie that we are defined by our possessions and by what we own.

The biggest challenge to Christianity in most suburban contexts is the temptation to be owned by the things that own us. It is the temptation to be content and comfortable with our space to live and our own things to have. I hope to learn more from my Filipino friends this summer about letting go of these material things that too often define who I am.