"The song lifted her up high": Jeff Sharlet on Faith and Faithlessness

Kelly Baker

Beefsteaks when I'm hungry

Something tall and cool when I'm dry

Give me greenbacks when the times are hard

Sweet heaven when I die--Blue Dogs, "Sweet Heaven When I Die"

While reading and re-reading Jeff Sharlet's Sweet Heaven When I Die: Faith, Faithlessness, and the Country in Between, a couple of songs replayed over and over in my head. His lovely and haunting collections of essays made my thinking musical. Perhaps, it is the beauty of his language, the lyrical quality of his descriptions, that direct me to hymns and pop songs (which is on my taste, not Sharlet's). Perhaps, it is because his reflections on religion, trauma, belief, unbelief, practice and loss feel like poetry. I cannot read his book without music, so songs emerged as the beginnings of my analysis. Every time I started to review this book, the music came to me first. Music evoked spaces I once inhabited as well as spaces in which I currently reside. Thus, I cannot review his book without referring to the accompaniment of music (and please note that John D. Boy at the Immanent Frame also feels this way). Hopefully, Sharlet will not mind since music appears in his work from Cornel West as "blues man" to a club named "the Church" to Creedence Clearwater Revival to Dock Boggs' "Down South Blues" to the songs playing at Sweet Fanny Adams, the motel and bar. Maybe the music even puzzles him a bit too.

The first song starts playing as soon as I see the title, Sweet Heaven When I Die, which my brain somehow translates into "When I die, Hallelujah, by and by" from the Christian hymn, "I'll Fly Away." I misread his title every time I puzzle over the image on the cover. Somehow humming this tune seemed to fit with Sharlet's explorations and excavations of the religious lives of Americans from his college sweetheart's continual return to the Bible to make meaning to the martyrdom of an anarchist to militarization of Christian youth in BattleCry to worship with German evangelicals and the construction of purity. Sharlet, as Brent Plate puts it, catalogs "weird religion." Sharlet's approach both deeply personal and documentary showcases individuals trying to make sense of their lives, their traumas, as well as attempts to create meaning out of chaos. His interlocutors try to find justice, try to heal themselves and others and try to navigate expected and unexpected losses.

Sharlet gives us glimpses into American religions writ small, individuals navigating worlds of faith. He writes about Molly Knott Chilson, his college girlfriend, "Her liberalism became Christian, and her Christianity was gentle and yet thick with the blood of scripture: the darkest passages of the prophets to which she's always been drawn..." (12). Or Cornel West: "His religion is that of the night side of scripture, the prophets of the Hebrew Bible and a Christ story as awful as it is redeeming" (50). Or Chava Rosenburg's writing about the Holocaust: "Beauty, not God, sustained her" (132). Vera Schnabel, his interpreter at the German Church of the Way, embraced both Jesus and America via music (and she also hums "I'll Fly Away). Sharlet writes about her conversion:

The song lifted her up high, and up there in the sky she was an angel, just like her black brothers and sisters. She wasn't an America, she wasn't German, she was nothing: She disappeared into the clouds and came out the other side a believer (153).

Moreover, Sharlet catalogs the development of American fundamentalism from the perspective of not only Ron Luce, the founder of BattleCry, but also the young adults at his Honor Academy as they struggle with sin, sexuality and "secularism." The specters of gender loom large in "She Said Yes," as Honor Academy attendees confront limited gender norms as sexuality becomes the language for and of sin. Moreover, Sharlet does not shy away from issues that make religious people and scholars of religion nervous. He tries to figure out the "price tag" of religious movements without turning to discussions of charlatanism or inautheniticity. While following a New Age healer, he notes, "You get what you pay for" (198) without snark. Capitalism resides in religion and spirituality (just ask Darren Grem or Richard King).

The second, likely more trite, song is a pop song. Sharlet cajoles, "Pop is religion, a source of stories and a conduit for myths, the smoke and mirrors by which large groups of people get together and...get 'vulnerable'" (225-226). I heard it on the radio (it stuck with me, haunted me, maybe). "If I Die Young" by the Band Perry reflects on loss, trauma and the "sharp knife of a short life" in a slightly off-kilter melody that reverberates. Sharlet also navigates loss, trauma and the lack of meaning (see also John Corrigan on meaninglessness). Many of the essays circle the trauma of every day life, unintended hurt and the loss of loved ones. In "Bad Moon Rising," the memory of the author's dead mother and uncle haunts while accompanied to the CCR song of the title. Cornel West discusses "death shudders," despair and coming to terms with the "reality of death, ordinary life--waiting to die, living as you never will" (60). In the last essay of the collection, "Born, Again," the life of Dock Boggs is juxtaposed with the loss of a friend's infant and a meditation on "quitting." Sharlet pens:

An input of energy results in motion. Simple math, nothing more than 2+2=4. Pages pile up and become books; babies grow up and become children.

The belief that either will necessarily prosper...that "things will work out," is grotesque: tragic and comic at the same time, funny because it's sad, sad because it's funny, awful because it just might be true. Seen from a distance, through a telescope or at the far remove of "art," a story or a painting or a poem or a song [or scholarship?], both the most mundane of expectations...are the painful spectacle, grievous mismatches of desire and power, of want and the ability to make it so (248-249).

All of Sharlet's interlocutors, his conversants, his interviewees, seek to manage trauma. How do we manage when ordinary life is about wounds rather than hope? How do we make sense of hurt, trauma, death, quitting, capitalism, consumerism, spirituality, music, art, or religion? (Or do we?) What do we do in the grips of a "death shudder"? Sharlet's Sweet Heaven When I Die flirts with old questions of suffering and meaning while suggesting that folks are just "trying to become human" but "not there yet" (259).

But this also proves useful to those of us who "write" religion as our scholarship. Sharlet's work pushes me to think about how we write the lives of our contemporaries or those long dead. How do we write trauma? How are scholars making meaning out of the messiness of individual lives? Or should we embrace the meaningless as an analytic frame too? What happens when we pay attention to religion writ small? What kinds of stories do we gain? And what kind of stories do we lose? The work evokes, and songs become my analysis, which makes me wonder how art can be helpful in our interpretations (Jason Bivins and Julie Bryne likely have much more to say about this). Why does this book come to me in song?

Adventures in Christian Retail: A Response -- Part II

by Darren Grem 

As promised, here's my follow-up to my first post in response to Charity Carney's recent "Adventures in Christian Retail." 
Why “Christian” at all?  

So, if we’re going to ask about their experiences, the experiences of those at CC and other Christian businesses, how do we start? The intersection of religion and capitalism is a pretty well-trod one, so we have plenty of guides. Marx, Weber, and dozens of lesser mortals have unpacked religion – especially a Western-derived version of Christianity – in the marketplace. You can certainly read Dr. Carney’s experience at CC with those models and come to fine conclusions. 

With CC and other CC’s, however, I think it’s also instructive to think about historical context before moving on to an analysis of why -- or in what way -- this particular site is “religious” at all. In other words, first focus not on what a CC is doing to mark itself as “Christian” or “religious.” Focus instead on what it cannot do at this particular historical moment. Companies cannot hire/fire/promote/demote employees based on religion as per the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title VII. Of course, they can get around this or create a wink-wink, nudge-nudge "cultural gatekeeper" that signals it’s only accepting applications from like-minded job seekers. And, if they are operating stores in areas where, say, 95% of the people in their local community are of some religious group, then there are powerful cultural pressures for folks not to raise a legal stink. Still, at the end of the day, ignoring or doing an end-run around Title VII is taking a risk of the most fearsome four-letter word in corporate America -- tort. 

Yet, many business owners feel compelled to do something. Why is that the case? It depends and ranges widely based on race, gender, political leanings (which are, admittedly, conservative in general), industry, mass vs. niche market, place, type of Christianity, and other factors. But one thing, at least as far as I can tell, does unite their various impulses for bringing Christianity into the workplace and marketplace. For the most part, they share a sense that the workplace and marketplace are spheres of influence and, therefore, places for cultural activism, a way of shaping the world in their own image.  

Indeed, the ideological and cultural fights of the past thirty years have made an impression on many Christian business owners. This is not to say that the cultural issues of previous decades have not, but that the recent ones over race (such as affirmative action), gender (such as abortion or the "feminization of work"), and class (such as the disconnect between work, identity, and community) are the most prominent -- and they have been wrestled with in the midst of drastic restructurings in American capitalism that have left many without a row to hoe, a line to work, or a mouse to click -- or worried about the said row, line, or mouse. As scholars, we like to focus on the "big" arenas, big-name politicians, and, unfortunately, all too often on the biggest blowhards in these fights. But I would argue that the reflective decision by a small business owner -- or an attendant or a cashier or line worker -- to bring "faith," however they conceive of it, to play in their personal crusade in and against whatever the imagine as the dominant culture to be -- that is worthy of attention as well because it illustrates the very work of identity construction, cultural construction, class construction, and political construction. It's the very place where religion hits the road. And, as Dr. Carney's dispatches noted, it's a decision with multiple and often complicated implications. 

Ok, so, given those historical considerations, how might we interpret what’s going on religiously at CC or other companies? What's a company that wants to be “Christian” to do?

It can create an unmistakably “Christian” internal culture. But there are legal risks involved with that, at noted above.  

It can encourage or allow a “soft culture” of Christianity in the company. I think this is where the “Christian muzak” that Dr. Carney heard comes in. I’ve been to many CC's and seen it in countless other forms. Evangelistic tracts sitting next to the candy rack. An ichthys on the registers or on stationary. Bible verses on the bottom of Big Gulps. Tattoos on a tattoo artist (my favorite). It

all seems to work off the same impetus -- toss a little Christianity into the pot as spiritual spice, thereby making the company just a little "different." To attenuate charges of sectarianism or intolerance, especially if its not selling goods or services“by Christians for Christians,” a company can be somewhat flexible with its language, imagery, rituals, and terms of consent. I think of it as custom-fitting a Christian business for a “spiritual but not religious”America. Playing “Imagine” in the midst of a CCM-tilting playlist is another way to do this. So is putting “God’s Glory Auto Sales” up instead of “JesusChrist is the Only Savior of MANkind’s Auto Sales." 

It can also encourage an operationally“Christian”culture in the company, one that accords to whatever managers and workers are willing to accept as “Christian.” This is extremely difficult to observe and generalize about, even though it is certainly the part that sympathetic observers of Christian business like to talk about. In much of the Christian business/self-help/leadership literature (which is a growing genre), this is everywhere and it's usually framed in us vs. them terms, sometimes with culture war flourishes, sometimes not. In short, it's the infusion of "faith at work" that creates the presumed “difference” that Christian business owners see between themselves and their “secular” competitors, especially in how“moral” or “ethical” their business practices are. Higher wages, better customer service, "Christian" leadership, "character"-based decisions not to cheat an unknowing customer – these are all practices that can fall under this category and advance the evangelical-style "world changing" that CC's often cast themselves as partaking in. As Dr. Carney notes, this also opens the company up to charges of hypocrisy on religious grounds. Someone might say, “I’m a Christian. To my mind, Christians don’t do what you're doing to folks. You’re doing that to folks. Are you really Christian?” I've already written about when or where such questions might be appropriate to ask. But as scholars, I think one of the more interesting lines of inquiry might be why those religiously-based criticisms do or don’t often stick to Christian companies (or companies in general). I’m sure those conducting research into the history of anti-corporate Christianity right now might have something to say about that. (See Heath Carter's post as well as Janine Giordano Drake's forthcoming dissertation.)  

It can use “Christian” in branding, promotion, and networking. Some companies explicitly advertise themselves as “Christian." Maybe they put it in their ads, mission statements, or name (e.g., ServiceMaster, as in "Service Thy Master"). Others do it through corporate policies like – as Dr. Carney notes –closing on Sunday. This certainly advertises to customers who might share the company's religious affiliation or sensibilities. In the past, this has also been a way of creating anti-secularist solidarity between Christian businesses and consumers, as witnessed by the uptick in "Christian" business directories in the 1970s and 1980s. The placement of company franchises in church-saturated or notably dual parent, heterosexual, evangelical environs can also create links between a company’s brand and a “base” of Christian consumers. Joining Christian business owners or workers in non-profit, non-competitive associations (e.g., Fellowship of Christian Companies International) can do the same, encouraging sacred "fellowship" and the creation of social capital between members of the same business class or niche market.  

It can incorporate “Christianity” or “Christian”tenets in its social engagements, CSR, philanthropic endeavors, and political interests. Not every Christian company does this, but many do. It takes various forms – sponsoring “character-building” camps for kids, donating to Christian service or missionary agencies, giving money to local Christian charities, giving personal wealth to like-minded candidates. Publicly-traded companies, of course, generally hold back on using corporate profits or encouraging religious donations by executives, for obvious reasons. For that reason, a decent number (probably about half) of businesses with Christian owners or managers are privately-owned, thereby freeing them up to be freer with their money (or with their “stewardship”as they often call it). Trust me –political donations are down the list. For these folks, at least, there’s not much ROI in theocracy.

All of this should give the sense that what Dr. Carney observed did not happen by accident. If we are to take religion seriously in the marketplace, we need to think seriously about what folks are deciding to bring into the workplace, when and why they are deciding to do that, and how and why certain manifestations of religion appear there. This can be highly specific and custom-made, particular to a given store in a given area in a given state at a given point of time. It might even be limited to a given shift.

We should also recognize that, for as much as the appearance of religion in the marketplace is intentional, it is not always as well-thought out by our subjects as we might think or expect. Best-laid incentive-chasing does not explain it all, no matter what the Freakonomicists say. This does not mean that our subjects are not religiously self-reflective or collectively so. It certainly does not mean that they are dumb. To be sure, those running Dr. Carney’s CC might be behind the times in terms of tag-gun pricing and finger-counting bookkeeping. But many of CC’s counterparts are not Luddites, primarily because they have never been or can’t afford to be.  Many founded hi-tech companies or work for engineering firms. A few run or work for design firms and programming shops; others depend on government contracts and more than a few work for the DOD. As Darren Dochuk is currently researching, a lot of them founded or work for extractive companies– hardly a profession for the empty headed. Others created retail chains and work for large-scale corporations that depend on “just in time” coordination, top-shelf mathematical models,and multivariate problem-solving. All that, in my opinion, is more instructive and important to consider than the low-fi traditionalism observed at CC. Evangelicals have been often noted for their technological prowess in media production from the printed page to the Internet age. I wonder if that they’ve been even more technologically-inclined and savvy in corporate America, a place that evangelicals have been comfortable working in and through for much of the twentieth century and especially for the past fifty years.

And yet, to be sure, just because they can get a precision, laser-cut sprocket delivered to Toledo by Tuesday does not mean that they dotting every "i' and crossing every "t" when they pull or push religion into the marketplace. There are incongruities caused by religion's presence in the marketplace that fit oddly even within our received models of how it should work -- and sometimes quite oddly with how our subjects imagine a given religious practice should work. 

Take, for instance, Sunday closing. Sunday closing is incongruous with the very capitalism it's embedded within. Capitalism does not close on Sunday. The goods that are on CC’s shelves might have been made by Christians in another time zone, where it was actually Sunday there but Saturday here. The cargo ships and tractor trailers transporting these goods to the loading dock behind the store did not stop running on Sunday. As Dr. Carney reports, folks worked on Sunday putting those goods on the shelves because of the pressures and demands of their boss, who is certainly aware of the pushes and pulls of the system. The only point in the capitalist system that can be closed on Sunday at CC is the consumptive point– the doors letting customers in and the people behind the cash register checking them out. And all that is primarily because it is in retail. Can you imagine a Christian hotel closing on Sunday? A Christian electric company? Or worse yet, a Christian coffee company? 

Sunday closing is, therefore, an odd thing. But I think it's at those points of incongruity and inconsistency are where the richest analysis can and should happen, at the very points too many journalists, scholars, and many others like to leave uncomplicated, poke fun, or dismiss. It's at those points when religious sites like CC push us to consider the in-betweens of culture and capitalism in contemporary life, as well as push us to think hard about those who work every day in the midst of those in-betweens. 

Thanks again to Dr. Carney for telling us all about her time at CC and inviting us to think about it. And, in case you're dying to know, "CC" is a pseudonym for [intentionally left blank].

Adventures in Christian Retail: A Response -- Part I

Darren Grem

I want to thank Dr. Carney for the opportunity to respond to her “adventures in Christian retail.” I don’t intend to offer a peer review or a point-by-point response to each post. Rather, I’d like to reflect on a few questions raised by Dr. Carney’s time at CC.

There’s probably too much to deal with in one post (read: I had more thoughts than one post can contain). So, I’m dividing it up into a few posts. Expect another one soon.

So, are they really “Christian”?
If you do research on “Christian” business long enough, you’re guaranteed to field some version of that question. Often, it's the first one that folks ask, and I think it comes from an urge for normative evaluation of for-profit endeavors and, therefore, of capitalism itself. For whatever reason, people want to know if you can do capitalism in a “Christian” fashion, by which they usually mean “morally,” “ethically” or “differently from That Bad Company I Hate.” Among Christians, especially evangelicals, the question usually begs for answers about whether a company is "doing more" than acting within the boundaries of the law. They usually want to know if a given company is also willfully encouraging what they deem to be “Christian” forms of activity, whether in-house or in its broader socio-economic engagements. It’s most analogous, I suppose, to questions about the “greenness” of a company, with all the attendant assumptions and complications that question entails. And, given the egregious abuses witnessed on Wall Street and elsewhere in corporate America in the past few years, it’s an understandable one to ask.

Others, of course, ask about a business’s Christianness because they are suspicious of any religious claim about business. Or, perhaps they relish hypocrisy. Either way, they want to know what really makes a Christian business tick, what really goes on behind the scenes, and who or what is really responsible for making the entire enterprise -- of Christianity, of capitalism, of "Christian" capitalism -- a fraud at best and a cover for abuse at worst.

If you wanted, I suppose you could take away either impression about CC, as per Dr. Carney’s dispatches. The comments that accompanied some of her posts – defending “Christian” businesses or deriding them – show that you can.

I certainly have my own opinions about the “Christianness” of various companies. But asking if a company is actually a "Christian" business usually ends up obscuring more than it reveals. Let’s be honest – as with anything else, where you start your line of inquiry will shape the questions you will ask and the answers you will probably get. Asking about a company's "Christianness" will also -- more than likely -- lead you back to yourself and your own definition of what "Christianness" entails. That's fine, I suppose, in certain contexts. But I'm not sure it will tell us much about CC or any other form of "Christian" enterprise.

That’s why I’d rather not do religious diagnostics here; neither do I want or intend to knock Dr. Carney’s own diagnostics of CC's "Christianness." So there's no misunderstanding, let me be crystal clear. I am not advocating that we ditch our moral, ethical, or religious compasses when thinking about religion and capitalism (and, of course, it’s debatable whether that’s even possible). Neither am I talking about situations where, say, a law has been broken. In Dr. Carney’s case, she claims that CC broke the law and claims to have solid, non-circumstantial, non-anecdotal evidence to prove it in court. Hence, she is urging investigation by OSHA and considering litigation. That is an entirely different matter, and, if she or anyone else wants to add religious justifications or language behind their reasoning for legal action, then they have every right to do so. I am only talking about how we proceed if we’re trying to make sense of the religious, historical, and economic dynamics behind the world of Christian business.

So, how can we proceed? Thankfully, Dr. Carney’s experience shows us a way.

Whatever you may think about the pros and cons of her “undercover” methodology, her discussions with folks at CC – especially the men and women working the aisles and running the registers – point to the fact that our interest in a company’s “Christian” identity is a shared one. The employees at CC evaluated its Christian claims for themselves and came away with opinions that do not fit easily into an either/or dichotomy. Their emotional state, personal experiences, religious upbringing, sex, race, economic security, historical context – all of these factors went into how they addressed, for themselves and others, how “Christian” the workplace was and is, how “Christian” their boss was and is, or how “Christian” their work was and is.

This is all to say that places like CC are very interesting religious sites indeed. They are places where the complicated relationship between identity, community, religion, class, gender, race, and capitalism is in high relief. Of course, they are not the only places where this relationship is available for observation and study in contemporary America. But they are a “field” of a sort. Or, as another historian of all this once told me, they are “archives” ripe for the picking.

So, for starters, let's try to proceed with an analysis of such sites that is less about us and our own religious or ethical or conceptual matrix. Rather, it is about trying to understand, contextualize, and convey theirs.

Up next: Why “Christian” at all?

Adventures in Christian Retail: Finale

By Charity R. Carney

This is the last installment of my extended commentary on my experiences working for a large Christian-run retail chain. Part I of that commentary is here. Part II is of this series is up here. Extended responses informed from Darren Grem's own academic work on capitalism and American Christianity are here and here.

The one good and seemingly Christian thing about CC (“Christian Chain”) is that it is closed on Sunday. Until it’s not. One of the aspects that many shoppers find appealing about CC (in addition to the P&W muzak like “Awesome God”—that’s for you, Paul Harvey) is that it openly states that it treats its employees well. It’s right there on the door as soon as you walk in: “Closed on Sunday for Worship and Family.” The store is technically closed on Sunday, but it must be for customers’ worship and families because oftentimes employees are called in on Sundays to stock shelves, clean the store, hurriedly ready it for an upcoming visit from management. So what is at the heart of the work ethic of CC? Is it a Christian calling or is it corporate pressure, or both?

A striking element of CC’s character is it does have many long-term employees—individuals who have been working there for several years, some almost a decade on and off. Why do they stay and why do they agree to work Sundays? Why do they keep working until 1 AM on some nights to get the stock on the shelves when their shift was over at 5 PM? Why do they maintain 14 hour days when they are making part-time pay with promises of full-time benefits eventually (oftentimes promises that go unfulfilled)?

I’ve considered many options and overanalyzed the answers to these questions, I’m sure. If one took a Weberian approach, the answer may be that the employees see some greater meaning to their work. They see their employment with the company as part of their larger role as members of God’s Kingdom and doers of his will. And some of the workers at CC may very well view themselves this way. Case study: an older woman, well beyond the age of retirement, comes to work every day and puts her all into her job. She sees the work as necessary for her family and also productive in and of itself. She keeps a Bible at her station and often shares passages with coworkers and customers. Mrs. Mary (as she is affectionately called by everyone, including the manager) is not content in her employment (she often talks about how she wishes that she could go home early or how her feet hurt), but she does engage in it as a result of a compulsion to work for a higher good. God wants her to work and she sees God’s hand in her work.

What undermines this Weberian perspective are the other employees. Sexual harassment is rampant at CC as well as a general desire to goof off. In other words, Mrs. Mary is not the norm. The sexual harassment is particularly distressing considering the said mission statement of the company. There is, however, internal arbitration for any complaints. (Sorry, but a “yeah, right” is due here as anyone who has dealt with “internal arbitration” before can probably attest.) I witnessed male employees taking pictures of female employees rear-ends and bragging about it, female employees grabbing each other’s crotches as a joke, and constant back-and-forth sexual teasing. I was once asked by a male coworker if I would ever cheat on my husband. All this being said, the sexual harassment and general malaise of CC employees completely detracts from whatever Weber would say about the company and the employees’ drive to work with a godly ethic. That ain’t happening.

In the middle of the two extremes is the “false idol” worship that is incorporated into every day dealings with employees behind closed doors. At every staff meeting the manager insists upon a prayer before getting down to business and the prayer always begins by thanking God for the owner of CC and asking God to bless the owner as the owner has blessed each of us. Creepy? Yes. Christian? Uh, no. I welcome analysis of this feature of CC as it was one of the more baffling. Perhaps it is a derivative of the Prosperity Gospel—the idea that the owner is making millions because of his commitment to God and that through trickle-down Prosperity Gospel we were somehow benefiting from it? Again, I welcome ideas here, especially from you, Deg.

Ultimately, I’ll lean on Marx (as usual) for an explanation of why employees remain in this environment (and don’t flee and file complaints with OSHA as I did). Opiate of the masses. Class. Take your pick. Religion serves as the opiate of the customers more so than the employees. Consumers come into CC with an understanding that it is a Christian company, that it is run on Christian values, that they will get soothing Christian muzak (sort of) once they enter the doors. Employees are force-fed an odd Christian message at staff meetings and through the general material culture of the place while not experiencing it in their interactions with other workers and managers. It is simply class status that keeps them there. They cannot find other employment because they have neither the skills or the education to do so. And if they do have skills/education there are other barriers: the market is terrible, one guy had a felony under his belt for domestic abuse, etc. It is mostly the ones who need the job who stay—they simply don’t have a way out. Another case study: I ran into a former CC coworker the other day. (She hardly recognized me out of uniform.) She has been at CC for over 2 years now and I never got close enough to her to tell if she was content or merely smiling because her job depended on it. Well, away from CC I found out. As soon as she saw me she ran up to tell me how much she and other coworkers wished they could do what I had done and quit. She wants to find something else but there just isn’t anything else out there. She is Pentecostal, lives by Christian virtues, and does not buy into CC’s message of Christian retail. Not after the way that she’s been treated as one of its employees. Her final message to me before we parted ways was “You go, girl. You did the right thing and stood up for yourself. I just wish I was in the position where I could do the same thing.”

Ultimately, it’s class that keeps CC’s employees there. Not some religious work ethic or “time for worship and family” on Sundays. They are there because they need the money and their families could not survive without the extra income.

My final thoughts on my experience working for CC are this: not all Christian-run retailers are the same, but the social expectations for them are. American consumers who purchase items because they believe that the corporation is working for some higher cause should question the company’s motives (key word: company) and should research what they are really selling. I think they may be surprised. I sure was.

Editor's note: You can follow Darren Grem's responses to Charity's posts "Adventures in Christian REtail" here and here

Adventures in “Christian” Retail: Part II

by Charity R. Carney

As DEG mentioned in a comment on my last post "Adventures in 'Christian' Retail, Part I," he’s going to be providing some expert commentary as I continue with my installments from my experiences this summer working for a Christian-run retail chain. So look for Darren Grem’s follow-up!

Update: Part III, the finale of Charity's series, is here. Extended responses informed from his own academic work on capitalism and American Christianity, from Darren Grem, are here and here.

Muzak. Bad muzak, but also an excellent indicator of the spiritual/secular influences on (what I’m teasingly calling) “Christian Chain” (CC). One of the things that customers constantly complement store management on is the “acoustic” music that streams incessantly over the speakers in the store. They say that it is soothing and that its Christian message is something that keeps them in the store and also keeps them coming back. It’s a very clever marketing gimmick, ultimately. But there are a few surprises that I encountered when I listened a bit more closely to what consumers were actually ingesting on their visits to CC.

Most obviously, the store pipes in the now-common coinciding traditional hymn and praise music combo that many churches have incorporated into their repertoire. Contemporary praise and worship has become so commonplace that many song melodies are as recognizable as Wesley’s hymns. While “Amazing Grace” is a muzak mainstay, so are songs like “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever,” “Our God is an Awesome God,” “Father I Adore You,” “Tear Down the Walls.” Hillsong United, Integrity Music, and other major praise and worship companies have obviously cooperated with CC to provide some of their more widely used songs in instrumental versions. They are pumped through a station at some headquarters whereby shoppers and employees at all of CC stores will have a uniform muzakal experience. It’s a strange collective experience, especially as the hours in your 12-16 hour shift wear on and “Above All” is ringing in your ears for the seventeenth time (no bitterness here, no sir--and more on the shifts and work schedules as well as my current dealings with OSHA in the next post).

What strikes me as interesting is that by making the music muzak, instrumental by nature, CC is relying on the customers’ knowledge of Christian music and the familiarity of the melodies to the general public (or at least the public that they are serving). They are also probably avoiding a ton of royalty fees, but Darren will certainly be able to better speak to that issue. But what they also do is reveal the secular nature of CC’s commercialism. In addition to Christian-themed music, the stores also have an odd array of non-Christian songs (in fact, some songs used are by nature not conservative or Christian at all). This fact first struck me as I was stocking merchandise and immediately recognized the butchered version of “Imagine” that suddenly began playing over the loudspeakers. “Imagine”? “Imagine no religion”? When I finished my task and returned to my department I asked another employee about the song--how could this store be playing that song (as happy as I was to hear it and for the respite from “Awesome God”)? I was confronted by a very defensive fellow worker who explained to me that “Imagine” is a Christian song and that John Lennon and the Beatles were all Christians. I tried to throw down some pop culture knowledge but eventually gave up and logged the event as singular. Maybe the higher-ups are under the same impression and honestly believe that “Imagine” is a Christian tune. Whatever. But it did make me listen a little more carefully to the muzak from then on and I discovered that the instrumentals that the customers so loved because of the Christian inspiration they received while shopping (no irony, none at all) did not adhere to any real ideology or logic whatsoever. Rod Stewart, Sting, John Mayer (“Your Body is a Wonderland”), all showed up in their repertoire. The Beatles are a favorite.

My sense is that as long as the tune is registered by the typical consumer’s ear as something that they know, that’s how it made the cut. So praise and worship and traditional hymns are recognizable, just like “Imagine” and “Broken Arrow.” In other words, commerce is king in the CC muzak department.

Adventures in “Christian” Retail

by Charity R. Carney

Disclaimer: This is a teaser. I’m working on a larger piece about experiencing employment at a Christian retail chain this summer. I took on the job because 1) we needed the money and 2) I was curious. I have been documenting my day-to-day life there as a full-time employee and am working up a full-length piece with an academic emphasis and analysis of marketing with religion, the gender politics of the place, as well as how they handle money and workers’ rights. Enjoy.

Update: Part II is of this series is now up here. Part III, the finale, is here. Extended responses informed from his own academic work on capitalism and American Christianity, from Darren Grem, are here and here.

I worked retail this summer. “Christian”-run retail. When I walked into the interview for the position at the local store that is part of a national chain (we’ll call it “Christian Chain” or “CC”), the manager was a bit baffled by the Ph.D. sitting in front of him. “Honestly,” I assured him (and meant it), “I want to work here and my family needs the income.” I (naively) believed that CC, a company that nationally proclaims its Christian values and give generously to conservative Christian causes/movements, would provide a good work environment and would reveal to me how Christian employers manage the workplace. It would give me insight into the world of Christian retail. And it has. Plenty of insight. So here’s a taste of what I witnessed in terms of the corporate model CC follows. The larger piece will include issues of sexism/sexual harassment and employee’s work schedules/worker’s rights but, like I said, teaser.

On money and mythology at CC: This company handles its resources in the most Luddite and inefficient way possible. There is one computer in the store where I worked. It was locked away in the back room and was used only to make/print out weekly schedules. All ordering is done by hand using a pencil and three-ring binders and a complicated system of “base” numbers and “minimum” orders. The poor soul who works in the back room has to then take all of the binders from each department and enter them into the one (aged) computer before a deadline in order for stock to come in.

There are no SKUs--no barcodes--no scanning devices. Thus the hand-written ordering. This is where the mythology comes in. I inquired about the lack of computers in the store and the ancient cash registers that required each item to be manually punched in and discounts to be manually entered as well. I was told that the cash registers WERE NEW. The explanation varied based on who responded to my questions. Some employees (especially those higher up) explained that it was just CC’s way. That it had maintained the same system since its birth (over 20 years ago) and that CC does not change. I found this idea interesting for several reasons. It requires more work from employees, thus costing the business more money. It is a business after all and so shouldn’t it be concerned with profits and losses? But it may also connect to the idea that workers should have sweat on their brow constantly in order to truly earn their wages. The Protestant ethic, so to speak. Work for work’s sake.

Several other (lower-paid) employees told me that the lack of barcodes was CC policy because barcodes represent the mark of the beast. Wha?! I know, this seems far-fetched. But this is a widely held belief amongst employees and thus should not be discounted. Some are dissatisfied with this reasoning but accept it, again, as being CC’s way so it cannot be questioned. (More on this in the longer article.)

Another strongly held belief is that the company does not have barcodes because then it does not have to have uniform pricing. Sales, then, do not have to be reflected at the register unless the customer notices that they are not receiving the discount and asks for it. A few employees see the lack of technology as a ploy for the company to make extra money.

There is an odd dichotomy at work at CC: they are focused on saving money (they are very concerned with hours and wages and do not move an employee to full-time unless they really need them and the employee makes enough demands) but they use a system that ultimately costs them money because it requires employees to work double or triple the hours at a task that in other stores is not nearly as involved and grueling.

Ultimately, what I’d like to consider in a larger format is what does it mean to be a Christian-run corporation in the modern marketplace? CC has held on to antiquated ideas regarding its particular brand of commerce, and the reasoning for that steadfastness varies based on what myth or history an employee chooses to subscribe. Also, the Christian values on which the chain claims to rely are not reflected in its treatment of employees or the employee’s treatment of each other. This begs the question: how much are “Christian” businesses relying on the image of being Christian without truly employing (or even hinting at employing) Christian ethics in their stores. This I will explore in more detail in the article with a discussion of sexual politics at CC and the overextension of employees to the point of completely disregarding their rights. Good times.

Fix the Economy GOD’$ WAY: Dave Ramsey’s Great Christian Recovery

Paul Harvey

During last night's disheartening tit-for-tat between President Obama and Speaker Boehner, the Speaker said "I've always believed that the bigger the government, the smaller the people." My snarkier side immediately thought, well then, the GI Bill turned the "Greatest Generation" into Lilliputians.

But more seriously, I'm interested in the religious history of the elements feeding the current budget stalemate and the respective economic philosophies of the various sides. One of those, I believe, is the significant influence of the Christian megastar financial advisor Dave Ramsey, whose radio show I have listened to for years (and whom I've written about very briefly here before). Last week, Ramsey held a sort of pep talk simulcast over the Web worldwide, called "The Great Recovery," which outlined his views of God's plans for economic recovery.

Over at Religion Dispatches today, I have a piece examining his philosophy, popularity, and political influence in terms of translating personal financial advice into nostrums of public policy. His plan is God's plan, and only God's plan will lead to economic recovery -- a familiar sentiment in American Protestant economic thought, to put it mildly. And a sentiment that provides a kind of theological base for the Tea Party caucus in Congress, whose members integrate much more religious thought into their worldview than is often understood. Anyway, a brief excerpt below, then follow the rest at the jump:

Wielding the Book of Proverbs and Zig Ziglar, where others might clutch their Friedrich Von Hayek or Milton Friedman, Ramsey provides a compelling theology of Tea Party national economic policy: Government spending is sinful, and arises from a national turning away from God’s ways of dealing with money; sin originated in the New Deal, the “first time in history” that people looked to the government and not to themselves for employment; and it is only the heroic efforts of private entrepreneurs, operating preferably without any government interference but with a strong Christian morality, that prevents exploitation and mandates helping others, that will restore both the spiritual and financial health of the country. John Galt, meet Jesus Christ

Continue reading . . . .

Update: Sara Mayeux has a really interesting post here on why credit card analogies, oversimplified as they may be, dominate fiscal debate -- very helpful for understanding Ramsey's basic trope of household finance = national finance, and also Obama's invocation of the same concept last night.

Beck's Long Goodbye

Kelly Baker



On this past Thursday night, Glenn Beck said goodbye to Fox News and television sets, and hello to GBTV, his internet news channel. Here's a recap of the last show involving Jon Stewart, Hitler, and God. Over at Religion Dispatches, I editorialize about his departure, his legacy of history-making, and his brand of nationalism. Here's a glimpse:

Much of the coverage concludes that Beck is, at best, “bonkers.” Alex Pareene of Salon.com, however, realizes that perhaps this is not “some sort of victory”; that leaving Fox is not the end of Beck, but rather that his legacy might not be as a talking head but as an amateur historian, the creator of Beck University, with a clear, and popular, articulation of nation. The tagline for BU promises, “learn history as it really happened” with David Barton responsible for courses labeled Faith 101, 102, and 103, in which students can (of course) learn about the faith of the Founding Fathers.

Beck’s mantle of telling history like it really “was” is packaged, glossy, and consumed. Yet this mantle, or even legacy, does not solely belong to him. The struggle to reclaim the nation, or “restore honor,” began long before he, the John Birch Society, Joseph McCarthy and the like joined it in the mid-twentieth century. Americans, from the Reconstruction Klan in the 1860s, the Know Nothings of the 1890s to the second Klan of the 1910s and 1920s, to home-grown Christian fascists of the 1930s, sought to protect a nation in peril from any perceived threat, be it Catholic, Jew, African American, or Communist.

How Oprah Became a Messiah: Prophet and Profit

Paul Harvey

As Oprah departs, to much media coverage, let us turn once more to our contributor Kathryn Lofton for a summing up of "What is Oprah"?

K. Lofton's book Oprah: Gospel of an Icon, has engendered a lengthy, multi-part, fascinating set of responses from numerous other scholars at Immanent Frame, and on the occasion of Oprah's departure from the network airwaves, Lofton's reflections on her career and meaning in the context of American religious history can be found at CNN Belief Blog, in the Los Angeles Times, in the New York Daily News, and in the Washington Post. Over at Killing the Buddha, Nathan Schneider also provides these links as well as a link to his own interview with Lofton, and gives his own thoughts, here.

Perhaps the easiest place to connect in to all this discussion is at the piece at the CNN Belief Blog, where our valued colleague writes:

As she departs from her ritual slot, there will be a vacuum for some. Yet if history has taught us anything, it is that the void will not be left gaping for long. “The false messiah is as old as the hope for the true Messiah,” wrote Jewish theologian Franz Rosenzweig. “He is the changing form of this changeless hope.”

Oprah represented humanity’s ceaseless interest in spiritual responses to personal problems. We now live in her world: one of first-person confessions, required makeovers, and spiritual consumption.

The measure of her consequence will be not in whether or not she mattered to you, but whether the world you occupy looks more like hers than you know.

Rapture Ready (Or Not)

Kelly Baker

While Paul, Chris, and Emily review excellent books in American religious history, I have spent a couple of days basking in the news coverage of the impending Rapture, at least according to the octogenarian Harold Camping and his Family Radio. As many of you likely know (thanks to Emily and Charity or the deluge of media coverage), Camping has proclaimed that the God’s Judgment signaled by the Rapture, the “catching” or “snatching up” of righteous Christians, will occur this Saturday, May 21, 2011. This is not the minister’s first calculation for the beginning of the end (1994), and it will likely not be his last. The beauty of millennialism is not in its rigidity but its malleability and adaptability. Camping fits securely into a long line of doomsday prophets, millennial visionaries, and according to the less gracious, religious hucksters who prey on people’s fears, money, and naiveté. Huckster or not, I don’t really care. Rather, I do care about what Camping’s media-frenzied stint says about the pervasiveness of millennial fervor in North America and the popularity of the vengeful fantasies of judgment that inundate apocalyptic belief, practice, and products.

As someone with an ongoing scholarly obsession with the apocalypse, consumption, and materiality, I am surely following my bliss this week with each mention, web click, Facebook status update, and journalistic attempt to understand the appeal of Camping and his billboard/caravan campaigns. The coverage of the impending Rapture runs the gamut of pet care services for the dogs, cats, and iguanas of the Raptured to Richard Dawkins’ grumpy commentary about said press coverage to Killing the Buddha’s Apocalypse Week 2011 to Salon’s explanation of Camping’s mathematical equations and dating of the end. The coverage ranges from somewhat sympathetic to downright hostile. Some admirably tie Camping a larger history of millennialism in North America, while others declare him a false prophet outright.

In August, I have an article coming out on rapture readiness (seems a little late considering the climate now), in which I document two other sources of Rapture information and practice, the prophecy work of Tim LaHaye and RaptureReady.com to document how the Rapture emerges as not only rhetorical and absent but also material and present. Why, for instance, is there such a thing as rapture practice or rapture pranking?

LaHaye is the co-author of the Left Behind books and avid author of prophecy books including one aptly titled The Rapture, and I have blogged about him before. In the competitive market of prophecy knowledge, LaHaye and the team at RaptureReady.com all deride Camping’s dating of the end. LaHaye notes that Camping has been wrong before and further proclaims:

You can be sure the rapture will not occur when anyone sets a date because God wants us all to live every day as though Christ could come today. A great motto for daily living is PERHAPS TODAY. For one day it will happen and we don't know when, but we don't want you to be left behind!

LaHaye’s reaction to Camping is not really surprising since they have competing visions of the Rapture for Christian consumption. Even RaptureReady.com, the self-proclaimed most visited (Christian) prophecy site on the web, provides a fascinating take down of this particular dating of the Rapture (“we can’t possibly know the date” is the usual refrain). Moreover, the founder Todd Strandberg writes:

In a dubious way, Camping is helping to set the stage for the Rapture. His failed predictions are helping to create the element of apathy that Jesus warned about. I read a report this week that said America is on track to have its most costly year ever for natural disasters. If people knew the Bible, they would understand the likely root cause of these disasters.

Strandberg designed the site to provide Christians, and those who might become Christians, with all the tools they need to become rapture “ready,” which includes belief in God, commitment to Jesus, and righteous action and living. RaptureReady.com houses information on biblical prophecy, readiness, and survival tips for the Tribulation period for those who are unlucky enough to be left behind.

While Camping might appear less credible if the 21^st comes and goes without the Rapture, LaHaye and Strandberg will continue to plug along prophesying an almost-but-not-yet end. I can’t help but wonder whether Camping’s ministry has aided in the sale of the Left Behind series or the web traffic to RaptureReady.com, which posted record-breaking site visits earlier this year. While prophets of doomsday come and go, the idea and artifacts of apocalypse remain. Perhaps, the larger lesson for May 21^st is the fervent wish for the end cannot be tamped down by disappointment or lack but reinvented in another form for another (or a remarkably similar) set of consumers. Rapture or not, just remember the Mayans and the zombies are lurking around the corner for their respective turns at the end.

Judgment Day Approaches... Again

by Charity Carney

This past weekend my husband and I took a much-needed respite before the onslaught of finals week to see a WILCO show (a rockin’ one I might add) in Denton, TX. We drove four hours through the Piney Woods of East Texas up into the DFW area for a little taste of civilization before spending the bulk of our summer cooped up in tiny Nacogdoches. As >we approached the metroplex, I saw evidence of the new apocalyptic fad that has thrown their millenarian lot and quite a few bucks in with Harold Camping, who has predicted that the Rapture will occur next Saturday (May 21). On the side of the road with about a dozen ads of Fergie selling Cherry Dr. Pepper (apparently it’s” smooth,” like her), the group has peppered in its own billboards declaring that the world will end this Saturday and urging passersby to prepare for Judgment Day. There is an excellent user friendly Salon article on the group and its beliefs (anti-orthodoxy/organized religion and End Times theology), which is especially good at describing the principle beliefs behind the Rapture and the way in which Camping has determined the date:

Camping and his affiliates present at least three explanations -- what he refers to as "infallible, absolute proofs" -- for May 21 being the day.

• It's the anniversary of Noah's Flood: A great deal of effort has been made by biblical literalists over the years to identify the exact chronology of the events dictated in the Old Testament. Some scholars, including Camping, adhere to the theory that the Biblical Flood took place on May 21 in the year 4,990 B.C. Then, in Genesis, God told Noah seven days before the Flood to warn people of the impending cataclysm. And Camping posits that this figure, seven days, holds greater significance than meets the eye. According to the biblical passage 2 Peter 3:8, "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." Therefore, argues Camping, Rapture should occur 7,000 years after the Flood. And the 7,000th anniversary of the biblical deluge, by his math, falls on May 21, 2011.
• It's the anniversary of Creation ... sort of: Another piece of evidence -- explained by Family Radio affiliate eBibleFellowship -- suggests that the world began in 11,013 B.C., and its 13,000th anniversary came and went in 1988. During that year, apparently on May 21, the end of the "church age" came to pass. Then, a 23-year time of "tribulation" began, during which Satan claimed dominion over all the world's churches. (Camping also supports this notion. He claims that the number "23" -- far from just being a poorly received Jim Carrey film -- also represents "destruction" in biblical symbology.) The end of this particular period of cosmological strife is said to fall on May 21, 2011.
• Divine Numerology: This elaborate line of reasoning first argues that Jesus Christ was killed on April 1 in the year 33 A.D. Using that date, the crucifixion would have occurred exactly 1,978 years and 51 days -- or 722,500 days -- before May 21, 2011. It turns out that 722,500 is also the product of an equation -- (5 x 10 x 17)^2 -- that includes three different numbers of significance, according to Camping. Five means "atonement." Ten indicates "completeness."And 17 signifies "heaven." Thus: Armageddon.

What happens if this Saturday passes with no major supernatural incident? Well, I guess they’ll just have to follow the Millerite example and do some recalculating…

But what’s really interesting about the group is that it taps into some of the themes recently discussed on this blog by writers like Kelly Baker, Paul Harvey, and Randall Stephens. That is, this group like many others has turned to commodification and mass marketing in order to advance their beliefs. While they are tapped into American religious traditions in many ways (disavowing denominationalism, promoting prophecies) they also demonstrate the continued modernization and progression of those traditions--plunging their message into the mainstream with expensive advertising campaigns and widely broadcast shows declaring their steadfast belief in the impending Judgment Day. While American religious groups have certainly evangelized through the air waves and have utilized the market before (Sister Aimee, Billy Sunday, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham….) we seem to have reached a new era in which proselytizing has become even more secularized/reliant on secular media to reach potential converts.

Fortunately for my husband, the hyper-analysis of the billboards only lasted for a couple of hours before I was distracted by pyrotechnics and awesome guitar riffs. And if the Rapture does come next Saturday, at least I can say that the two of us went out with a bang.

Tuesday Merry-Go-Round: From Oprah to Rob Bell to Chick-Fil-A to R. J. Rushdoony's Righter-Than-Thou Economics (And Why They all Matter)

Paul Harvey

If you're like me and pushing your red pen up a Sisyphean pile of papers, you may not have time to get to any of these good reads right away, but I'll put some good stuff to read later for you up here so you can get to it when you can get to it. Yes, it's miscellaneous but good links day here.

First, we've noted here the great set of dialogues going over at Immanent Frame (with 12 substantive and engaging responses now) on Kathryn Lofton's Oprah: Gospel of an Icon. The latest entrant in the conversation is our friend Tracy Fessenden's O Tedious Selfhood, a wonderful and very funny take. A brief taste:

How has the trajectory of American religious history brought us to this place, this Oprah?

A thumbnail history might go like this: The Protestant sanctification of the commonplace, the discovery of divine light in the mundane array of objects and acts taken up by a priesthood of believers, proves a boon to American merchants and clerics alike. As Protestantism finds itself more and more at home in the New World, its religious dispositions and their modes of production become less separable from everyday life—indeed, they come to make up the fabric of everyday life. This means your life. The erstwhile Puritan discipline of self-scrutiny brings the things of the world increasingly into its purview, reading them for the shimmering glint of spiritual favor. Advertising, the most aspiring of evangelical preaching’s bastard offspring, offers the promise of entry into a more charismatic life in exchange for the dissipation of spiritual and economic capital: buy, believe, buy and believe more. Consumer choice and religious option open along the same paths, obscuring relational possibilities and imperatives that might bind you to a particular past, a more circumscribed future, to anything that might constrain the unfolding of your own best life. Women gain ground in the commercial revolution faster and more easily than they wrest standing from church authorities, leaving the latter to play catch-up with the consumer culture they helped to foster. Buy and believe. Find what works for you. Purveyors of spirituals and temporals alike ratchet up the “imperatives of comfort nestling modern women in a language of self-service.” “Self-service,” here, is pitch-perfect: Because you’re worth it. And by the way, you’re on your own. We’re now in Oprah’s world—“a world in which we find alluring the templates to which we are fitted,” as Jason Bivins gorgeously puts it, “a melancholy whose song of empowerment sells us resignation as the hope we know will be dashed.”

Next up, for you American Historical Association members, is Darren Dochuk's piece in the latest Perspectives, the monthly newsletter of the AHA: "Searching Out the Sacred in U.S. Political History." You'll have to be a member to get it online, or track it down in your library, and it's well worth the short read. Accompanying this, by the way, is the new anthology edited by Darren and Michelle Nickerson, Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Place, Space, and Region, another fine volume from the University of Pennsylvania Press' "Politics and Culture in Modern America" series. The volume includes Darren Grem's great piece (which we blogged about here before) "The Marketplace Missions of S. Truett Cathy, Chick-fil-A, and the Sunbelt South," and it also includes a statistical political science-y analysis of "Religion and Political Behavior in the Sunbelt."

And what would a week here at the blog be without a little discussion of hell. We noted before Lauren Winner's take on the Rob Bell Love Wins controversy; I neglected then to note Krista Tippett's take on the same, also in the Washington Post.

Finally, those of you who follow Religion Dispatches will know of Julie Ingersoll's fascinating work there tracing down the significant, if somewhat hidden, influence of Christian Reconstructionism on various aspects of the contemporary right, (she is currently, I believe, writing a book on said subject). See, for example, "Huckabee Channels Rushdoony," and "Reconstructionists Celebrate 'Ruling Over the Earth' Day."

Mark Oppenheimer discusses this further in his piece "Christian Economics Meets the Antiunion Movement," from the New York Times a couple of days ago. Aside from discussing the topic of Gary North's economic views, the article also gives a brief (and funny) history of the dysfunctional family history of "Christian Reconstructionism" from its intellectual godfather R. J. Rushdoony to its contemporary exponent North. If you have no idea what any of this is, here's a very brief summary, from the piece:

Mr. North, who is Mr. Rushdoony’s son-in-law but was not on speaking terms with him from 1981 until Mr. Rushdoony’s death, focuses on how that biblical libertarianism applies to economics. He concluded that the Bible forbids any welfare programs, is opposed to all inflation, and requires a gold-coin standard for money.

Oppenheimer's piece addresses the always difficult historical question of tracing influences. He writes:

Professor Ingersoll concedes it is difficult to prove direct connections between Mr. North’s writings and Wisconsin antiunion conservatism. On the other hand, Mr. North might like to think he has influenced the Wisconsin debate, and he has written in vociferous support of Gov. Scott Walker.

And, as Professor Ingersoll cautions, influence does not always announce itself:

“I like to say, ‘How many Christians know who is Augustine is, and how he influenced them?’ ”

Oprah: Spirituality, Mediation, and Consumption

Paul Harvey

Recently we posted a bit to point to you an interview with our favorite professor from Yale, Kathryn Lofton, on her new book Oprah: Gospel of an Icon.

Time for some more reading/discussion on the work, courtesy of two deeply probing pieces on the book posted at Immanent frame. First, David Morgan's "Spirituality, Mediation, and Consumption" notes that Kathryn Lofton’s fascinating study demonstrates that Oprah is not aping religion as a way of selling her product but conducting a practice of self-culture that appeals to many precisely because they believe it lifts them above their circumstances to reveal possibilities they had not imagined. Oprah’s genious is for achieving a coincidence of self-care, commoditization, mass-mediation, and entertainment. If that’s not modern religion, I don’t know what is.

Then you can move on to Deirdre English, "Will Oprah Winfrey Save Us All,"

There should be more to come in this series of posts.

Update: Salon has posted an interview with K. Lofton in which the author expresses some of the main ideas of her book in very accessible answers, and connects Oprah to a tradition of female preachers with ambiguous lives. Here's a little taste:

"I connect her to two figures -- George Whitefield, a prominent 18th century minister, and Charles Finney, a 19th century minister -- who weren't merely interested in spreading the gospel but also eliciting conversion. There's an idea that a gospel is true if the purveyor is willing to talk about how it's made. Oprah does that every time she does a show about "Oprah without makeup" or a confession about her weight gain -- this is her showing the strings of her own construction."

"The other tradition I connect her to is the emergence of women as evangelical preachers, who always had to be conscious that they were being somewhat insurrectionist to the Word by even being out in the public. Oprah tries to appeal to an audience that wants to see a successful and capable woman without being too perfect. She can't be too obnoxious in the face of the conservative domestic idea that we still have for women. So Oprah isn't married nor does she have children because if she had those things and was also trying to be Oprah, her audience would be uncomfortable. That she is free to minister only to them and is not responsible to a domestic life actually puts her in a long line of preachers with similarly ambiguous lives."