Consumerism Really Gone Too Far!
As I type this I glance at a widget on my desktop telling me that it is only 2 days, 17 hours, 35 minutes and 17 seconds until the Apple Computer World Wide Developer Conference in San Francisco. Why is my eye floating to the nerdy info bit every once in a while this week? I am looking forward to announcements about the new iPhone. My new job is all about online organizing, staying connected – I finally have a legitimate reason to upgrade into the iPhone. Then as I am doing research for the aforementioned new job, research about topics that our members have indicated are important to them – one issue tweaks my conscience – consumerism. In fact I spent the greater part of my final semester in seminary working on an annotated bibliography for an Ethics class and guess my focus? Yep – consumerism. And here I am all-aglow with geek-tacular excitement over a gadget that I want to buy and I run across a most disturbing article that exposes a most heinous sector of consumer culture. The title of the article (not from the Onion mind you) is :
“Diners Club Offers Payment Plan for Vietnamese Brides” – yes – you read that correctly. I know I will not do it justice so you can read the whole piece by by Amanda Kloer here:
So then I was compelled to look around and see what our churches are saying about human trafficking…here is what I found:
From the UMC’s Book of Resolutions
A UMC Resolution
UMC article
Church members can address trafficking locally
From the PC(USA) in 2007
Agencies Work to Find Victims, Prevent Sex Trafficking
From the Episcopal Church
Human Trafficking: The Episcopal Church Responds
And from the UCC - A PDF Resolution
Human Trafficking
If you have comments or other resources you are invited to email me I will share with others here. Email Kimberly
Next Blog – some of the consumerism resources from my seminary project.