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The Megachurch-Industrial Complex: Searching for Transcendence in the Culture Industry: The Frankfurt School in New Times

Autor Dr. Josiah Kidwell
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 12 oct 2026
A Las Vegas megachurch transforms faith into spectacle to attract the unchurched, even as its iconoclastic approach strains longstanding religious and cultural traditions.

Drawing on critical theory, media studies, and the sociology of religion, Josiah Kidwell situates the church's evolution within broader patterns of rationalization in civil society and the spectacle-driven urban landscape of Las Vegas. Using extensive fieldwork, he chronicles the church's shift into an entertainment-oriented religious franchise and unpacks the cultural trade-offs that accompany this change. Kidwell explores how the leadership's organizational approach and use of new media and popular culture reshape place attachment, recast communal life, and introduce the one-dimensional logic of the culture industry. Throughout, Kidwell resists deterministic accounts, highlighting how members interpret, negotiate, and sometimes push back against these changes while also revealing the subtle erosions they produce in social life. Ultimately, this book offers a sharp, multilayered portrait of religion's adaptation to an entertainment-saturated society-and will be of interest to scholars of religion, media studies, cultural sociology, and anyone curious about the future of communal life in an age of spectacle.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781666947151
ISBN-10: 1666947156
Pagini: 176
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 mm
Editura: Bloomsbury Publishing
Colecția Bloomsbury Academic
Seria The Frankfurt School in New Times

Locul publicării:New York, United States

Cuprins

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: New Life Church in Perspective
Chapter One: Religious Micro-Place Attachments: Getting Plugged in and Unplugged at New Life Church
Chapter Two: Organizing and Disorganizing a Multisited Megachurch: Exploring New Life Church's Mediated Approach to Coordinating Religious Brand and Uniformity
Chapter Three: The Rationalization of Church Life: A "One-Size-Fits-All" Approach to Religious Community and Identity
Chapter Four: The Sanctuary of the Spectacle: Megachurches and the Production of Christian Celebrities and Consumers
Conclusion
Methodological Appendix
References
Index
About the Author

Recenzii

This is a remarkable study in its capacity to develop multiple epistemic angles on the megachurch as a socio-spatial macroworld, shifting scale from broad cultural transformations to the lived experience of individual believers with striking fluency. Structural trends and intimate religious practice are seamlessly interwoven, yielding a rare balance between critical theory and participant-centered analysis. The result is an empathetic and incisive reading, at once analytically rigorous and deeply humane.
Josiah Kidwell deploys Frankfurt School theory and methodology to provide an original and engaging study. Kidwell's critical analysis shows how the megachurch draws on media technology, advertising techniques, and spectacle to draw spectators into their church, demonstrating how religion today is promoted and shaped by techniques of the cultural industries. His analysis shows how important forms of religion today are mediated by big religious corporations that which use strategies of the culture industry which transform religion into a vital part of the consumer society.
With a keen and focused eye for observation coupled with sharp analytical skills, Josiah Kidwell takes readers into the fiery spectacle of the contemporary American megachurch. By deftly applying Critical Theory's concepts and perspectives, he shines a light on some dark places where Christianity, new media, and popular culture collide, morph, and ascend in unexpected and sometimes alarming ways.