1st Edition
Selling the Sacred Religion and Marketing from Crossfit to QAnon
There’s religion in my marketing! There’s marketing in my religion! Selling the Sacred explores the religio-cultural and media implications of a two-sided phenomenon: marketing religion as a product and marketing products as religion. What do various forms of religion/marketing collaboration look like in the twenty-first century, and what does this tell us about American culture and society?
Social and technological changes rapidly and continuously reframe religious and marketing landscapes. Crossfit is a “cult.” Televangelists use psychographics and data marketing. QAnon is a religion and big business. These are some of the examples highlighted in this collection, which engages themes related to capitalist narratives, issues related to gender and race, and the intersection of religion, politics, and marketing, among other key issues.
The innovative contributors examine the phenomenon of selling the sacred, providing a better understanding of how marketing tactics, married with religious content, influence our thinking and everyday lives. These scholars bring to light how political, economic, and ideological agendas infuse the construction and presentation of the “sacred,” via more traditional religious institutions or consumer-product marketing. By examining religion and marketing broadly, this book offers engaging tools to recognize and unpack what gets sold as “sacred,” what’s at stake, and the consequences.
A go-to resource for those working in marketing studies, religious studies, and media studies, Selling the Sacred is also a must-read for religious and marketing professionals.
Part 1 Branding, Promotion, and Religious Media—Past and Present
1. From Logos to Logo and Back Again: Images as Transactional Objects in the History of Christian Devotion
David Morgan
2. Spiritual Healing for Sale: Medical Pluralism and the Commodification of Native American Healing Traditions
Sarah Dees
3. Rex Humbard, Psychographics, and the Hard Sell
John Modern
Part 2 Politics and Religio-Marketing
4. Sharpiegate
John Durham Peters
5. Two Truths and a Lie: Unpacking PragerU’s Hostile Rebrand of Climate Action in Religion of Green
Sarah McFarland Taylor
6. A Head for Politics: Yarmulkes, Presidential Politics, and the Marketing of (Jewish) America
Eric Michael Mazur
7. First Thoughts on a Second Qoming: Reading QAnon’s Occult Economy Through the Works of Jean and John Comaroff
Brian Hughes
Part 3 Old Marketing in New Media
8. Faith-Centric Tiktoks: Promoting Religion through Personalized Experience and Engagement
Mara Einstein
9. Selling to "Smarties": The Marketing Strategies of a Social Justice Influencer
Kristin M. Peterson
10. Marketing Mainline Campus Ministry: "God Loves Everyone, No Exceptions"
John Schmalzbauer
11. Inventing a Digital Evangelical Audience
Corrina Laughlin
Part 4 Spirituality and Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)
12. Live Your Best Life Now: Wellness, Spirituality, and Multi-Level Marketing in the Health Freedom Movement
Susannah Crockford
13. #BecauseofLuLaRoe: MLMs and the Rhetoric of Freedom, Girlboss Feminism, and Retail Ministry
Deborah Whitehead
Part 5 Cult Branding, Purpose Marketing, and the Body Politic
14. Drinking the Crossfit Kool-Aid: Cult Marketing Meets Functional Fitness
Cody Musselman
15. Purpose-Driven Food: Evangelical Diet Marketing and Conscious Capitalism
Chad E. Seales
Part 6 Religion, Marketing, and the Spirit of Capitalism
16. Hinduism and the New Spirit of Capitalism: Vocational Theology in 21st-Century Spiritualist Self-Improvement Literature
Justin W. Henry
17. Vintage not Retro: The Secondhand Social Life of Christian Material Culture
James S. Bielo
18. (Not) Marketing Atheism: A Conversation with Gregory Epstein
Mara Einstein
Biography
Mara Einstein is an internationally recognized expert on deceptive marketing tactics, a sought-after speaker and writer, and a Professor of Media Studies at Queens College (CUNY), United States.
Sarah McFarland Taylor is an award-winning author and Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Environmental Policy and Culture at Northwestern University, United States.
