Mike Ovey, Principal of Oak Hill College in England, wrote on the rioting in London and elsewhere in England a few days ago (the piece itself does not bear a date).  Ovey warns against treating the rioters as the “other,” which he accuses both liberals and conservatives on the political spectrum of doing:

“By and large, whether the columnist is a bleeding-heart liberal or a flog-’em diehard, there’s a sense that the looters are profoundly “other”, different, alien. So the liberal chat turns on words such as alienated or disaffected. The diehards use words such as enemy, feral or savages. But the liberal and the diehard both seem to see the looters as profoundly other, patronisingly in the one case, demonisingly in the other. The thought is that the looters are not like us.”

Ovey, however, sees these riots as “consumerist” riots and point to lessons well-learned by those who want to acquire, by illegal and sinful means, the stuff that the rest of society values:

“These are “consumer society riots”, says Dr Paul Bagguley, who is a sociologist at Leeds. This is very perceptive. It points clearly to the consumerist, acquisitive nature of the looting, and it hints that these are the kind of riots that a consumer society (and let’s not forget, that’s all of us) has. It hints that this is the kind of riot you expect from members of a consumer society, not from those who refuse to be part of it. That does not allow me to say the looters are totally alien or other, or even “enemies of society” in a straightforward way. The looters are committed to the consumer society. They’re “us”, not simply “them”.”

Ovey looks to the Bible to suggest a Christian response and explanation. He locates four themes from the Bible which help to understand what was motivating the rioters. This is the fourth of his themes:

“The fourth theme is the great biblical theme running from Genesis 3, through the Exile along to Judas’ suicide: sin doesn’t work. Consumer societies love the bottom line, and I wonder if some of the intensity the looting has provoked doesn’t betray an unease just there. The consumer society has bought the lie of justification by wealth: and it’s about time it heard the truth.”

Please read the rest of his commentary here. What do you think?

 John W. Martens

Follow me on Twitter @johnwmartens

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.