e home buyers as worshippers

Consider the fabled American saying attributed to Mark Twain: “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore,”19 or the proclamation from Wall Street billionaire John Paulson, “If you don’t own a home, buy one, if you own one home, buy another one, and if you own two homes buy a third and lend your relatives the money to buy a home.”20 Whether it is through folklore or the modern day success story, the gospel of owning a home has relentlessly been preached into the DNA of Americans. US historian Jim Cullen observes, “‘The American Dream of owning a home’ . . . No American Dream has broader appeal, and no American Dream has been quite so widely realized.”21 Yet it is not simply a dream, but a rite of passage, a “‘stake in society’ expected of fully-fedged members in many American communities.”22 However, it would be naïve to think this is only an American dream. The deifcation of housing has transcended national lines. In Australia, a poll conducted by Australian National University found more than three quarters of Australians view home ownership as part of the “Australian way of life.”23 In China, which has the biggest property market in the world, home ownership is “China’s ultimate symbol of

19 Mark Twain quoted in Forbes India “Thoughts on Real Estate” in Forbes, March 29, 2018. https://www.forbesindia.com/article/thoughts/thoughts-on-realestate/49823/1

20 John Paulson quoted in Josh Helmin, “Urgent Advice From Billionaire John Paulson: ‘Buy A House and Gold’” in Forbes, September 29, 2010. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshhelmin/2010/09/29/urgent-advice-frombillionaire-john-paulson-buy-a-house-and-gold-plus-rupert-murdochs-paycut/?sh=4504cc66f183

21 Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 136.

22 William M. Rohe, and Harry L. Watson, Chasing the American Dream: New Perspectives on Afordable Homeownership (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), Preface vii.

23 Australian National University quoted in Ros Bluett, “Australia’s Home Ownership Obsession: A brief History of How It Came to Be” in ABC News, success, the mark of adulthood, readiness for a family, and ownership of one’s fnancial destiny.”24 In Japan, housing is a rite of passage into middle-class society.25 To some extent, attaining housing functions as a sacrament for the developed world, akin to baptism into its community. Teasing this out further, frst -time home buyers seek to be baptized into it, investors seek to be sanctifed by it, and retirees seek to be glorifed through it. The property is sought for more than simply a home, income, or capital. Rather, it carries an ontological weight, akin to a religious belief. Its adherents implicitly worship the housing deity, as property gives them status, identity, entraps them in debt, lulls them to desire more, and thus orders their daily rhythms.

Similarly, as followers of the Triune God, our faith is a way of life, guiding our daily rhythms and commissioning us to fulfll the commission of Christ. However, unlike the worshippers of the housing deity, we are not followers of a nationalistic ideal, material success or a promise of fnancial destiny. Nor do we seek to be accepted into secular societies and subcultures. Instead, our faith calls us out to be part of His body of believers, the ἐκκλησία, to be discipled, worship, and give witness to God’s Kingdom, not for self-indulgent ideals, but for self-denying ideals.

August 23, 2017. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-23/why-australians-areobsessed-with-owning-property/8830976

24 Peggy Sito and Pearl Liu, “China Property: How the World’s Biggest Housing Market Emerged” in South China Morning Post, November 26, 2018. https://www. scmp.com/business/article/2174886/american-dream-home-ownership-quicklyswept-through-china-was-it-too-much

25 Ann Waswo, Housing in Postwar Japan – A Social History. (New York: Routledge, 2002), 92.