Holy Mavericks
Holy Mavericks

Author: Phillip Luke Sinitiere

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2009-04-01

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0814752454

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Joel Osteen, Paula White, T. D. Jakes, Rick Warren, and Brian McLaren pastor some the largest churches in the nation, lead vast spiritual networks, write best-selling books, and are among the most influential preachers in American Protestantism today. Spurred by the phenomenal appeal of these religious innovators, sociologist Shayne Lee and historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere investigate how they operate and how their style of religious expression fits into America’s cultural landscape. Drawing from the theory of religious economy, the authors offer new perspectives on evangelical leadership and key insights into why some religious movements thrive while others decline. Holy Mavericks provides a useful overview of contemporary evangelicalism while emphasizing the importance of "supply-side thinking" in understanding shifts in American religion. It reveals how the Christian world hosts a culture of celebrity very similar to the secular realm, particularly in terms of marketing, branding, and publicity. Holy Mavericks reaffirms that religion is always in conversation with the larger society in which it is embedded, and that it is imperative to understand how those religious suppliers who are able to change with the times will outlast those who are not.

Holy Mavericks
Holy Mavericks

Author: Shayne Lee

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2009-04

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 0814752349

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Joel Osteen, Paula White, T. D. Jakes, Rick Warren, and Brian McLaren pastor some the largest churches in the nation, lead vast spiritual networks, write best-selling books, and are among the most influential preachers in American Protestantism today. Spurred by the phenomenal appeal of these religious innovators, sociologist Shayne Lee and historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere investigate how they operate and how their style of religious expression fits into America’s cultural landscape. Drawing from the theory of religious economy, the authors offer new perspectives on evangelical leadership and key insights into why some religious movements thrive while others decline. Holy Mavericks provides a useful overview of contemporary evangelicalism while emphasizing the importance of "supply-side thinking" in understanding shifts in American religion. It reveals how the Christian world hosts a culture of celebrity very similar to the secular realm, particularly in terms of marketing, branding, and publicity. Holy Mavericks reaffirms that religion is always in conversation with the larger society in which it is embedded, and that it is imperative to understand how those religious suppliers who are able to change with the times will outlast those who are not.

"Brand® New Theology

Author: McGee, Paula L.

Publisher: Orbis Books

Published: 2017-03-16

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 1608336921

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

McGee critiques the popular Health & Wealth message so prominently targeted especially to black Christian women. She examines the preaching and writing of T. D. Jakes as the most representative of a new phenomenon, the New Black Church, a new form of prosperity gospel that signifies what she calls the Wal-Martization of religion."

The Violent Take It by Force
The Violent Take It by Force

Author: Matthew D. Taylor

Publisher: Broadleaf Books

Published: 2024-10-01

Total Pages: 382

ISBN-13: 1506497799

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Required reading for anyone seeking to understand Christian nationalism." —Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne A propulsive account of the network of charismatic Christians that consolidated support for Donald Trump and is reshaping religion and politics in the US. Over the last decade, the Religious Right has evolved. Some of the more extreme beliefs of American evangelicalism have begun to take hold in the mainstream. Scholar Matthew D. Taylor pulls back the curtain on a little-known movement of evangelical Christians who see themselves waging spiritual battles on a massive scale. Known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this network of leaders and believers emerged only three decades ago but now yields colossal influence, galvanizing support for Trump and far-right leaders around the world. In this groundbreaking account, Taylor explores the New Apostolic Reformation from its inception in the work of a Fuller Seminary professor, to its immense networks of apostles and prophets, to its role in the January 6 riot. Charismatic faith provided righteous fuel to the fire that day, where symbols of spiritual warfare blazed: rioters blew shofars, worship music blared, and people knelt in prayer. This vision of charismatic Christianity now animates millions, lured by Spirit-filled revival and visions of Christian supremacy. Taylor's unprecedented access to the movement's leaders, archives, internal conference calls, and correspondence gives us an insider account of the connection between charismatic evangelicalism and hard-right rhetoric. Taylor delves into prophetic memes like the Seven Mountains Mandate, the Appeal to Heaven flag, and the Cyrus Anointing; Trump's spiritual advisor Paula White's call for "angelic reinforcements"; and Sean Feucht and Bethel Music's titanic command of worship styles across America. Throughout, Taylor maps a movement of magnetic leaders and their uncompromising beliefs--and where it might be headed next. When people long to conquer a nation for God, democracy can be brought to the brink.

Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World
Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World

Author: David Hempton

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 0198798075

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the early twenty-first century it had become a clich that there was a "God Gap" between a more religious United States and a more secular Europe. The apparent religious differences between the United States and western Europe continue to be a focus of intense and sometimes bitter debate between three of the main schools in the sociology of religion. According to the influential "Secularization Thesis," secularization has been an integral part of the processes of modernization in the Western world since around 1800. For proponents of this thesis, the United States appears as an anomaly and they accordingly give considerable attention to explaining why it is different. For other sociologists, however, the apparently high level of religiosity in the USA provides a major argument in their attempts to refute the Thesis. Secularization and Religious Innovation in the North Atlantic World provides a systematic comparison between the religious histories of the United States and western European countries from the eighteenth to the late twentieth century, noting parallels as well as divergences, examining their causes and especially highlighting change over time. This is achieved by a series of themes which seem especially relevant to this agenda, and in each case the theme is considered by two scholars. The volume examines whether American Christians have been more innovative, and if so how far this explains the apparent "God Gap." It goes beyond the simple American/European binary to ask what is "American" or "European" in the Christianity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in what ways national or regional differences outweigh these commonalities.

Authentic
Authentic

Author: Sarah Banet-Weiser

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2012-10-15

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0814787142

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Brands are everywhere. Branding is central to political campaigns and political protest movements; the alchemy of social media and self-branding creates overnight celebrities; the self-proclaimed “greening” of institutions and merchant goods is nearly universal. But while the practice of branding is typically understood as a tool of marketing, a method of attaching social meaning to a commodity as a way to make it more personally resonant with consumers, Sarah Banet-Weiser argues that in the contemporary era, brands are about culture as much as they are about economics. That, in fact, we live in a brand culture. Authentic™ maintains that branding has extended beyond a business model to become both reliant on, and reflective of, our most basic social and cultural relations. Further, these types of brand relationships have become cultural contexts for everyday living, individual identity, and personal relationships—what Banet-Weiser refers to as “brand cultures.” Distinct brand cultures, that at times overlap and compete with each other, are taken up in each chapter: the normalization of a feminized “self-brand” in social media, the brand culture of street art in urban spaces, religious brand cultures such as “New Age Spirituality” and “Prosperity Christianity,”and the culture of green branding and “shopping for change.” In a culture where graffiti artists loan their visions to both subway walls and department stores, buying a cup of “fair-trade” coffee is a political statement, and religion is mass-marketed on t-shirts, Banet-Weiser questions the distinction between what we understand as the “authentic” and branding practices. But brand cultures are also contradictory and potentially rife with unexpected possibilities, leading Authentic™ to articulate a politics of ambivalence, creating a lens through which we can see potential political possibilities within the new consumerism.

Spirit Cure
Spirit Cure

Author: Joseph W. Williams

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-02-14

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0199765677

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Joseph W. Williams examines the changing healing practices of pentecostals in the United States over the past 100 years, from the early believers to the later generations of pentecostals and their charismatic successors.

The Business Turn in American Religious History
The Business Turn in American Religious History

Author: Amanda Porterfield

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0190280190

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Business has received little attention in American religious history, although it has profound implications for understanding the sustained popularity and ongoing transformation of religion in the United States. This volume offers a wide ranging exploration of the business aspects of American religious organizations. The authors analyze 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, their essays show that American religious life has always been informed by business practices. Laying the groundwork for further investigation, the authors show how American business has functioned as a domain for achieving religious goals. Indeed they find that religion has historically been more powerful 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 demonstrate the range of new studies stimulated by the business turn in American religious history. Other chapters show how evangelicals joined neo-liberal economic practice and right-wing politics to religious fundamentalism to consolidate wealth and power, and how they developed marketing campaigns and organizational strategies that transformed the American religious landscape. Included are essays exposing 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. Still others examine the application of business practices as a means of sustaining religious institutions and expanding their reach, and look at controversies over business practices within religious organizations, and the adjustments such organizations have made in response. 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 Gaithers and Southern Gospel
The Gaithers and Southern Gospel

Author: Ryan P. Harper

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2017-04-26

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1496810937

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series--a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market. The Homecomings represent "southern gospel." Typically that means a musical style popular among white evangelical Christians in the American South and Midwest, and it sometimes overlaps in style, theme, and audience with country music. The Homecomings' nostalgic orientation--their celebration of "traditional" kinds of American Christian life--harmonize well with southern gospel music, past and present. But amidst the backward gazes, the Homecomings also portend and manifest change. The Gaithers' deliberate racial integration of their stages, their careful articulation of a relatively inclusive evangelical theology, and their experiments with an array of musical forms demonstrate that the Homecoming is neither simplistically nostalgic, nor solely "southern." Harper reveals how the Gaithers negotiate a tension between traditional and changing community norms as they seek simultaneously to maintain and expand their audience as well as to initiate and respond to shifts within their fan base. Pulling from his field work at Homecoming concerts, behind the scenes with the Gaithers, and with numerous Homecoming fans, Harper reveals the Homecoming world to be a dynamic, complicated constellation in the formation of American religious identity.

Digital Religion
Digital Religion

Author: Heidi Campbell

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 041567610X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Digital Religion offers a critical and systematic survey of the study of religion and new media. It covers religious engagement with a wide range of new media forms and highlights examples of new media engagement in all five of the major world religions. From cell phones and video games to blogs and Second Life, the book: provides a detailed review of major topics includes a series of case studies to illustrate and elucidate the thematic explorations considers the theoretical, ethical and theological issues raised. Drawing together the work of experts from key disciplinary perspectives, Digital Religion is invaluable for students wanting to develop a deeper understanding of the field.