
Assembling Religion
The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
How Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel
Henry Ford did not just mass produce cars. As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the "gospel of reincarnation," mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Ford's contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Ford's efforts at the head of the Ford Motor Company have commonly been understood as secular, Ford himself was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world.
This religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company repositions them within critical studies of religion, examining how Ford transformed American religious practice in the twentieth century. Drawing directly on documents from Ford's archive, it examines Ford's mass production methods and bureaucratic reforms as examples of prosperity gospel traditions, illuminating the ways manufacturing and technology intersect with American religious practice. Bridging American religious and industrial history, Assembling Religion offers a new and surprising way to understand Ford's impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface: Totemic Fording
- Introduction: Slanting toward the Religious
- 1. A Metaphysics of Mass Production and Fordâs âGospel of Efficiencyâ
- 2. âSpiritual Hegemonyâ and Fordâs Rite-to-Work Religion
- 3. Capital Service and Fordâs Supersessionary Secularism
- 4. Harrowing History and Fordâs Run-of-the-Mill Relics
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author