Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture. We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction. We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue. Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.

Our seduction into beliefs in competition, scarcity, and acquisition are producing too many casualties. We need to depart a kingdom that creates isolation, polarized debate, an exhausted planet, and violence that comes with the will to empire. The abbreviation of this empire is called a consumer culture.We think the free market ideology that surrounds us is true and inevitable and represents progress. We are called to better adapt, be more agile, more lean, more schooled, more, more, more. Give it up. There is no such thing as customer satisfaction.We need a new narrative, a shift in our thinking and speaking. An Other Kingdom takes us out of a culture of addictive consumption into a place where life is ours to create together. This satisfying way depends upon a neighborly covenant--an agreement that we together, will better raise our children, be healthy, be connected, be safe, and provide a livelihood. The neighborly covenant has a different language than market-hype. It speaks instead in a sacred tongue.Authors Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann, and John McKnight invite you on a journey of departure from our consumer market culture, with its constellations of empire and control. Discover an alternative set of beliefs that have the capacity to evoke a culture where poverty, violence, and shrinking well-being are not inevitable--a culture in which the social order produces enough for all. They ask you to consider this other kingdom. To participate in this modern exodus towards a modern community. To awaken its beginnings are all around us. An Other Kingdom outlines this journey to construct a future outside the systems world of solutions.

Signs of the Times xiiiIntroduction: C ontext Is Decisive xviiThe Landscape of the Market World xxEnclosure xxiCovenantal Versus Contractual Order xxiThe Neighborly Covenant xxiiChapter 1 The Free Market Consumer Ideology 1Scarcity 2Certainty and Perfection 3Privatization 3The Institutional Assumptions 4Better Management/Technology Is the Fix 4Interpersonal Is a Problem 5Competition Trumps Trust 5Toward a Neighborly Culture 6A Culture Based on Covenant 6Chapter 2 Neighborly Beliefs 9Abundance 9Mystery 10Mystery at Work 11A Place for God 13Holiness 15Wilderness 15Fallibility 16Failing to Be God 18Grief 19The Common Good 20Chapter 3 Enough Is Enough: Limits of the Market Ideology 21The Consumer Market Disciplines 22Surplus 22Predictability and Control 24Speed and Convenience 26The Sale of Convenience 26Convenience Displaces Capacity 27Digital Solutions 28The Meaning of Money 29Money and the Machine 30Wishing for Safety, Believing in Growth 31Competition and Class 32Class by Design 33Class Warfare and the Distribution of Wealth 34The Myth of Individualism 36Chapter 4 Tentacles of Empire 37The Corporatization of Schools 38No View from the Top 38End of Aliveness 39Mobility and Isolation 40Un-Productive Wealth 41Violence 42Illusion of Reform 43Chapter 5 The Common Good Is the New Frontier 45The Neighborly Covenant 46The Commons 48An Alternative Social Order 49Resisting the Empire 50Off-Market Possibilities 51The Neighborly Way 53The Alternative to Restless Productivity 55The Shadow Side of Community 58Chapter 6 The Disciplines of Neighborliness 61Time 63A Time for All Things 63Time Is the Devil 63Standing in Line 65Kairos 65Food 66Food and Sacred Re-Performance 67The Local Food Movement 69Food and Culture 69Silence 71Listening 72Quakers and Time and Listening 72Sacraments of Silence 73Covenant: A Vow of Freedom and Faithfulness 74Covenant and Retributive Justice 75Abundance and the Right Use of Money 75Money and Our Affection for Place 77A Liturgy for the Common Good 77Prophetic Possibilities 78Story as Liturgy and Re-Performance 79The Re-Performing Power of Liturgy 79Postscript: Beyond Money and Consumption 81Timing Is Everything 82Signs of Change 83Commentaries 85References and Further Reading 97Acknowledgments 103About the Authors 105Index 111