A friend asked me the other day what I thought about an article that accused Christians of giving into materialism. I admitted the article was right, but expressed a lot of frustration that it would take a whole lot to change people’s actions. I was my own proof.

And it’s really beyond Christians. Certainly Christians have the most pressing reason to leave materialism behind (let’s just say it wasn’t listed as an ideal in the Sermon on the Mount), but it’s really a problem endemic to Americans.

And who’s doing anything about it? A few kooks have started a magazine and published a book or two. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head, sometimes they don’t.

The whole issue is boiling below the surface of American thought, waiting to rise up. The real question is whether or not the church is going to force the uprising and cause the change, or will the church once again be following culture’s lead with a nod of our heads and a “Yeah, that’s what we thought all along.” It seems the church has been caught with its pants down on plenty of broad cultural idea like environmentalism and feminism. Will materialism be next?

I think it’s time the church lead for once in its life. It happened before when a man named Rev. Martin Luther King lead scores of people on march after march. The Civil Rights Movement succeeded. It was a costly battle, one you could easily argue has been given up recently, but it was successful nonetheless.