The Religion & Culture Web Forum

May 2007

The Desire to Acquire:
Or, Why Shopping Malls Are Sites of Religious Violence

By Jon Pahl
Professor of the History of Christianity in North America
The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia

Respondents:
Peter Childs, University of Gloucestershire
James Farrell, St. Olaf College
Vincent Miller, Georgetown University
James Wellman, University of Washington

In the May issue of the web forum, Jon Pahl links field research (a visit to the Mall of America) and theoretical inquiry in examining the place of shopping malls in contemporary culture and the insidious ways that malls borrow from religious categories in order to simulate religious experience:

…malls in America today function as sacred places—as disorienting labyrinths through which consumers are reoriented to the desire to acquire. The desire itself is not the problem: without such desire, human beings do not eat, think, love, work, or play. Acquisition in itself is religiously neutral. The desire to acquire can, however, quickly veer into violence, and the record of the shopping mall on this score can at least be interpreted…as somewhat less than ideal. Still, many senior citizens walk in mall corridors to exercise because they find malls to be sanctuaries of civility in an otherwise uncivil society. And in comparison to many traditional sacred places, malls do keep better hours…

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