An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture

The consumer culture holds the belief that no amount is enough. The free market ideology produces economic crises, violence, and an exhausted planet. An Other Kingdom provides a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking, to take us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where contract is replaced by covenant, consumption is replaced by neighborliness, and time is reclaimed as our own. This is a modern exodus towards a connected community, built on an alternative set of beliefs, liturgy, and disciplines. The shift has begun and out of it we find a better way to raise our children, be healthy, be safe, and be kinder to the earth.A fast-paced, hard-hitting smack of a book . . . [with] specific, practical ways we can move toward greater neighborliness for the common good. -WILL WILLIMON, Professor of Christian Ministry, Duke Divinity School, Durham, NC and United Methodist Bishop (ret.)The book is not sentimental . . . but rather hopeful of fundamental economic, social, and cultural transformation, reminiscent of economist Fritz Schumacher. -SUSAN WITT, Schumacher Center for a New EconomicsAn alternative vision of a neighborly society, one that draws upon our deepest sacred and secular traditions and is already being constructed by ordinary people in many local communities. -WALTER T. DAVIS, Professor Emeritus, San Francisco SeminaryOriginal and illuminating. Prophetic and liberating! -ROBERT INCHAUSTI, author of Thomas Merton's American Prophecy, Subversive Orthodoxy, and The Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary PeopleShines like the North Star in the night sky: a joy to read, and a compass to hold close as we face the unknown and unknowable environmental, political, relational, and spiritual challenges that lie out ahead. -CORMAC RUSSELL, author of Asset-Based Community Development; Managing Director of Nurture Development; faculty member of ABCD Institute, and lead steward for ABCD in Europe