Get Free Ebook Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore
Nowadays, the innovative modern technology constantly offers the incredible functions of just how this book. Everybody will certainly need to obtain such particular reading material, about science or fictions; it will rely on their conception. Occasionally, you will certainly require social or science book to read. Often, you require the fiction or literature book to have more home entertainment. It will certainly ensure your problem to get even more motivation and experience of reading a publication.
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore
Get Free Ebook Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore
Now, just what do you think about the arising books this moment? So many publications exist as well as published by numerous publishers, from lots of nations in this globe. Yet, have you to be a lot more discerning to select one of the very best. If you are perplexed on how you pick the book, you could extract from the topic to offer, the author, as well as the reference.
Why should be this book Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore to review? You will certainly never get the knowledge as well as encounter without obtaining by on your own there or attempting by on your own to do it. Thus, reviewing this publication Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore is required. You can be great as well as proper adequate to obtain exactly how vital is reading this Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore Even you consistently review by responsibility, you could sustain on your own to have reading book habit. It will certainly be so valuable and also fun after that.
Book, an among the secrets to enter the new globe always is shared in an excellent way. Even you really appreciate of this book, you may not obtain anything from here. One means is simply by taking the soft data of Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore to review and also review guide to complete. Understanding just what the writer utter could assist you to understand and also obtain the advantages of this book. So, it doesn't need the magic ways to get inspirations. It does not have to take more times and much money to obtain this publication as your collection.
By saving Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore in the device, the means you read will certainly likewise be much less complex. Open it as well as begin reviewing Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore, straightforward. This is reason we recommend this Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore in soft data. It will not disrupt your time to get guide. On top of that, the on the internet air conditioner will certainly likewise relieve you to look Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore it, also without going someplace. If you have link internet in your office, home, or gadget, you can download Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore it straight. You may not also wait to obtain the book Selling God: American Religion In The Marketplace Of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore to send out by the vendor in other days.
Religion in America is up for sale. The products range from a plethora of merchandise in questionable taste--such as Bible-based diet books (More of Jesus. Less of Me), Rapture T-shirts (one features a basketball game with half its players disappearing in the Rapture--the caption is "Fast Break"), and bumper stickers and Frisbees with inspirational messages--to the unabashed consumerism of Jim Bakker's Heritage USA, a grandiose Christian theme park with giant water slide, shopping mall, and office complex. We tend to think of these phenomena--which also include a long line of multimillionaire televangelists and the almost manic promotion of Christmas giving--as a fairly recent development. But as R. Laurence Moore points out in Selling God, religion has been deeply involved in our commercial culture since the beginning of the nineteenth century.
In a sweeping, colorful history that spans over two centuries of American culture, Moore examines the role of religion in the marketplace, revealing how religious leaders have borrowed (and invented) commercial practices to promote religion--and how business leaders have borrowed (and invented) religion to promote commerce. It is a book peopled by a fascinating roster of American originals, including showman P.T. Barnum and circuit rider Lorenzo Dow, painter Frederick Church and dime novelist Ned Buntline, Sylvester Graham (inventor of the Graham cracker) and the "Poughkeepsie Seer" Andrew Jackson Davis, film directors D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, Norman Vincent Peale and Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. Moore paints insightful portraits of figures such as Mason Locke Weems (Weems's marriage of aggressive marketing and a moral mission--in such bloody, violent tales as The Drunkard's Looking Glass or God's Revenge Against Adultery--was an important starting point of America's culture industry), religious orator George Whitefield (who transformed church services into mass entertainment, using his acting talents to enthrall vast throngs of people), and Dwight Moody, a former salesman for a boot-and-shoe operation who founded a religious empire centered on the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago (and who advertised his meetings in the entertainment pages of the newspaper). Moore also shows how the Mormons pioneered leisure activities (Brigham Young built the famed Salt Lake Theater, seating 1,500 people, months before work on the Tabernacle started), how Henry Ward Beecher helped the ardent Protestant became the consummate consumer (explicitly justifying the building of expensive mansions, and the collecting of art and antique furniture, as the proper tendencies of pious men), and how the First Amendment, in denying religious groups the status and financial solvency of a state church, forced them to compete in the marketplace for the attention of Americans: religious leaders could either give in to the sway of the market or watch their churches die.
Ranging from the rise of gymnasiums and "muscular Christianity," to the creation of the Chautauqua movement (blending devotional services with concerts, fireworks, bonfires, and humorous lectures), to Oral Robert's "Blessing Pacts" and L. Ron Hubbard's Church of Scientology, Selling God provides both fascinating social history and an insightful look at religion in America.
- Sales Rank: #328017 in Books
- Brand: Oxford University Press
- Published on: 1995-07-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 5.32" h x .65" w x 8.00" l, .94 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
- Great product!
From Publishers Weekly
Moore, a professor of history at Cornell University and the author of Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans , sees paradoxical connections between religion and various forms of commercial entertainment. In a novel approach to explaining the American church-state separation that yet leaves "religion a central component of the traditions of laicity," the author traces the "commodification" of religion from the Mormon social halls, musicals and theatrical performances of the 19th century to the televangelical empires of Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson and Jimmy Swaggart in the 20th. Moore looks at the application of skilled advertising techniques not only in contemporary electronic ministries but also in the mainline churches, which have made subtler adaptations to the pluralistic marketplace in such areas as fund-raising, for example. Thoughtful, nonpolemic and provocative, Moore's study is a significant contribution to the scholarship of American religious history.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Moore ( Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans , Oxford Univ. Pr., 1987) traces the history of marketing techniques in American religion. He asserts that the First Amendment ban on state religion necessitated a competitive approach, that religion "had to sell itself not only in the competitive church market, but also in a general market of other cultural commodities." Moore traces these efforts and their reciprocal effect on the book, stage, and leisure market in America from colonial times to the present, devoting a chapter to the relationship between politics and religion and one to religious advertising and mass media. The final chapter looks at contemporary evangelicals and New Age groups. This is a well-documented historical study of a fascinating aspect of American religion. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
- C. Robert Nixon, MLS, Lafayette, Ind.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The commercialization of religion, discussed in a detailed historical survey that is also a critique of American religiosity. When Bruce Barton stated in the 1920's that Christ picked up 12 men from the bottom rungs of business and forged them into an organization that conquered the world, he was expressing a particularly American attitude toward religion. Here, Moore (History/Cornell; Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans, 1986, etc.) attempts to trace its evolution from Independence to the present day. He believes that its origin lies in the First Amendment's rejection of an established church and the consequent need for religions to seek popular appeal in order to survive. Beginning with the challenge of the theater and the cheap novel in the country's early years, Moore shows how preachers agonized between condemnation of the growing popular culture and the idea that it could be used for religious purposes: the latter approach inevitably won, and religious leaders adapted all too successfully to the demands of the marketplace. The author takes us through such movements as Spiritualism, Mormonism, Chautauqua, the Jubilee singers, and New Age. We learn that Central Park was designed to induce ``orderly and contemplative habits'' among New York's poor and that the graham cracker was part of a health program for spiritual uplift. Moore observes that the preachers had a big problem with the imagination and stipulated that recreation needed to have a serious moral purpose. The religion that emerged was soft on dogma and emphasized feeling good, with revival meetings taking the place of European carnivals or modern rock concerts. Moore writes with sardonic wit as he describes the image of Christ as a Rotarian, and argues that commercialization is simply the American form of involvement with the ``secular''--and that if it strips religion of its prophetic power, at least it spares us the strife of such places as Ireland, Bosnia, and India. Likely to appeal to social historians and cynics everywhere. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore PDF
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore EPub
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore Doc
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore iBooks
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore rtf
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore Mobipocket
Selling God: American Religion in the Marketplace of CultureBy R. Laurence Moore Kindle
