I had an excellent conversation today with my friend John from New World Border, in which he seared my mind with some hot new insights into religion and culture.

The gist of his argument was that mainstream Christianity arose as sort of the “Walmart of religion.” Like a virus, the Church replicated itself across the land, co-opting ideas, undercutting “prices,” gobbling up real-estate, and providing a one-stop shopping source for all your (diluted) religious needs.

The plight of bookstores over the last ten to fifteen years is also a great example. Back when I was a kid, I remember being able to sneak around dusty old used bookstores on Sunday afternoons, and coming away with a mound of dog-eared much-loved books for under ten dollars. Then sometime in the mid-to-late nineties, these bookstores rapidly began vanishing. Why? They couldn’t keep up with the enormous Barnes & Noble which moved in down the street.

I know there’s a lot of people out there who don’t see what the big deal is about losing small mom ‘n pop stores, especially if the consumer can benefit from price breaks or increased availability of goods. I know trying to argue people down from that ledge is pretty much a fruitless operation, so I won’t try. But I think it makes for a really useful metaphor in understanding the history of religion in the West.

One of my favorite parts of the theory John argued was that gnostics represented a sort of counter-Walmartization of religion force. They were in favor of the small local family-run type of “business.” Which means they believed in personal authority, and creative individual spiritual solutions over mass-produced plastic junk imported from another country.

History generally didn’t treat these gnostics kindly. The hierarchical franchise of the Catholic Church couldn’t afford to allow their attitudes of self-reliance and operating outside the system to flourish. Luckily, despite centuries of persecution, their ideas never died away. In fact, they are arguably more popular today than they ever were - which is good because we need them more now than ever as the world marches towards total Walmartization.