The Routledge Handbook of Religion and American Culture

List of Figures

List of Contributors

Introduction
Chad E. Seales

Energy

1.     Sugar
Susannah Crockford

2.     Whaling
Richard J. Callahan, Jr.

3.     Fossil Fuels
Evan Berry

4.     Nuclear
Amanda M. Nichols

5.     Renewable
Robin Globus Veldman 

Industry

6.     Banking
David Walker

7.     Manufacturing
Kati Curts

8.     Communications
Jenna Supp-Montgomerie

9.     Pharmaceuticals
Gary Laderman

10.  Marketing
Mara Einstein

Public Life

11.  Agriculture
Adrienne Krone

12.  Architecture
Ann Marie Borys

13.  Home
Shampa Mazumdar and Sanjoy Mazumdar

14.  Education
Ari Y. Kelman

15.  Workplace
Isaac Weiner

Music

16.  Jazz
Tracy Fessenden

17.  Gospel and Blues
Paul Harvey

18.  Country
Erica Hurwitz Andrus

19.  Hip Hop
Christina Zanfagna

20.  Punk
Jason C. Bivins

Arts and Entertainment

21.  Broadway
Kathryn Lofton

22.  Fashion
Kayla Renée Wheeler

23.  Sports
Rebecca T. Alpert

24.  Comedy
Shanny Luft

25.  Television
Elijah Siegler

26.  Film
Khytie Brown

Life and Death

27.  Healthcare
Elizabeth Sepper

28.  Birthing
Pamela E. Klassen and Judith Ellen Brunton

29.  Adoption
Alexandra Nelson-Tomlinson

30.  Capital Punishment
Randall Styers

31.  Artificial Intelligence
John Modern

Index

Biography

Chad E. Seales is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He earned a B.A. from the University of Florida, an M.T.S. from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research addresses the cultural relationship between religion and secularism in American life. He is the author of Religion Around Bono: Evangelical Enchantment and Neoliberal Capitalism (Penn State University Press, 2019), The Secular Spectacle: Performing Religion in a Southern Town (Oxford University Press, 2013), and has published articles on religion and food, industrial religion, corporate chaplaincy, religion and film, and secularism and secularization in the United States.

“In this new contribution, Seales presents an impressive 31 essays from interested authors on the subject…each of which offers insights into how cultural religion has been constructed and performed in the United States taking up themes of caste, corporatism, and capitalism as well as themes of race, gender, class, sexuality, social movements, and organizational forms of control and resistance. Religion is understood here from a material and cultural perspective, shifting away from the focus on churches, denominations, or official religions, to examine how religion manifests itself in everyday cultural life…This volume is well structured and a welcome contribution to the study of religion regarding American culture.”

- Michal Saidl, Masaryk University, Brno in Religious Studies Review, Vol. 51 No. 4 (Dec 2025)