Research Catalog

Evangelicals incorporated books and the business of religion in America

Title: Evangelicals incorporated [electronic resource] : books and the business of religion in America / Daniel Vaca.
Author: Vaca, Daniel, 1980-
Publication: Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England : Harvard University Press, 2019.

Available Online

Details

Description

1 online resource (329 pages)

Summary

"Long before evangelical Christians became known as a powerful political constituency, evangelicals were a profitable consumer constituency. In Evangelicals Incorporated Daniel Vaca argues that evangelical Christianity became a prominent form of religious life in the twentieth-century United States through commercial activity. To tell this story, Vaca focuses especially on the evangelical book industry, which not only has produced some of the bestselling titles in American history but also has inspired the world's largest secular media conglomerates to pursue evangelical markets. Drawing on corporate archives, personal letters, interviews, and more, [this work] explains how for-profit evangelical publishers and booksellers grew from modest roots to one of the most lucrative corners of the international book trade. By exploring areas of commercialism such as branding, retailing, marketing, and finance, Vaca illustrates how commercial media companies have cultivated and capitalized upon the expansive idea of evangelicalism since the end of the nineteenth century"--

Uniform Title

Evangelicals incorporated (Online)

Alternative Title

Evangelicals incorporated (Online)

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-307) and index.

Access (note)

Access restricted to authorized users.

Contents

Finding profit : the ascendance of commercialism -- Brands of distinction: creating value through the fundamentalist networks -- Trade associating: evangelical allegiance in the mass market -- Righteous retail : women, family, and the social power of selling -- Financial faith: corporate finance and traditions of growth -- The spirit of market segmentation: markets something for everyone.

LCCN