Business is an understudied area in American religious history that has profound implications for how we understand the popularity and ongoing transformation of religion in the US. This volume explores the business aspects of American religious organizations by analyzing the financing, production, marketing, and distribution of religious goods and services and the role of wealth and economic organization in sustaining and even shaping worship, charity, philanthropy, institutional growth and missionary work. Treating religion and business holistically, the essays show how business practices have continually informed American religious life. Laying important groundwork for further investigation, the essays show how American business has operated as a domain for achieving religious purpose that historians of religion often overlook. Even when critics denounce its corruption and fallen state, business occupies a central place in American religious life that merits better understanding. Historically, religion has been more powerful in America when interwoven with business. Chapters on Mormon enterprise, Jewish philanthropy, Hindu gurus, Native American casinos, and the wedding of business wealth to conservative Catholic social teaching indicate the range of new studies stimulated by the business turn in American religious history. Other essays show how evangelicals joined neo-liberal economic practice and right-wing politics to religious fundamentalism to consolidate wealth and power, and develop marketing campaigns and organizational strategies that transformed the broader parameters of American religious life. All these essays stimulate new ways of thinking about American religious history, and about American success. Some essays in this volume expose the moral compromises religious organizations have made to succeed as centers of wealth and influence, and the religious beliefs that rationalize and justify these compromises. Other essays dwell on the application of business practices as a means of sustaining religious institutions and expanding their reach. Still others take account of controversy over business practices within religious organizations, and the adjustments religious organizations have made in response. Together, the essays collected here offer various ways of conceptualizing the interdependence of religion and business in the U.S., establishing multiple paths for further study of their intertwined historical development.

About the Author
Amanda Porterfield is the Robert A. Spivey Professor of Religion and History at Florida State University. She is the author of several books in American religious history and the history of Christianity, including Corporate Spirit: Religion's Role in the Long History Behind Corporate America, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. John Corrigan is the Lucius Moody Bristol Distinguished Professor of Religion and Professor of History at Florida State University. He is author or editor of several books, including The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion. Darren E. Grem is an Assistant Professor of History and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of The Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Reviews
Rich in historical detail and fresh with theoretical insight, The Business Turn in American Religious History challenges and inspires new ways of reading and constructing American religious history. * Daniel Jones, Religious Studies Review *
Rare is the essay collection that advances a scholarly paradigm shift. The Business Turn in American Religious History is one of those exceptions. Amanda Porterfield, Darren Grem and John Corrigan's volume offers a definitive word on the history of faith and corporate capitalism in America... From beginning to end, then, The Business Turn in American Religious History delivers one rich and surprising insight after another... In sum, this volume is a state of the art/state of the field address, one that scholars will find invaluable for their work in the archives and on the written page, as well as in the classroom. * Darren Dochuk, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, Journal of Ecclesiastical History *
Together, the essays collected here offer new ways of conceptualizing the interdependence of religion and business in the United States, establishing multiple paths for further study of their intertwined historical development. * The Southern Register *
As the authors of the essays in this volume show, examining religion and religious institutions through the lens of business provides numerous insights into how religions gain influence, how they spread, both in the United States and throughout the world, and how their members come to terms with serving both God and mammon. The book is highly recommended for scholars of both religious history and business history. * Matthew C. Godfrey, Reading Religion *



Book Information
ISBN 9780190280208
Author Amanda Porterfield
Format Paperback
Page Count 264
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 386g
Dimensions(mm) 150mm * 231mm * 15mm