The American Writers Museum

Religious Studies professor Dr. Kati Curts visits the AWM to discuss her book Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America, which illustrates how Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel. 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. Books will be available for purchase and Dr. Curts will sign them following the program.
This is an in person program at the American Writers Museum. This program will also be livestreamed.
This program is presented in conjunction with the AWM’s special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, a powerful new exhibit that takes you on the ultimate exploration through spirituality and storytelling. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
More about Assembling Religion:
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.
Praise for Assembling Religion:
“Tells a powerful story about an iconic brand and cultural agent that transformed life in and far beyond the United States. The religious feature of this story is eye-opening, and rigorously researched… Will quickly earn an important place in the literature on American history, religion, technology, and business.”
—David Morgan, author of The Thing about Religion: An Introduction to the Material Study of Religions
“A brilliant advance in the study of religion, this book sees through the prevailing secular myth of Henry Ford to expose Ford’s pervasive religious myth-making in American life. Assembling Religion revitalizes key terms of analysis, such as myth, ritual, and the sacred, while demonstrating how they work in the world. Kati Curts is a new strong voice in the ongoing work of mediating the familiar and the surprising in American religion and culture.”
—David Chidester, author of Religion: Material Dynamics
DR. KATI CURTS is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Sewanee: The University of the South. She is a historian of religion, specializing in the history and culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. She teaches courses and researches at the intersections of religion, capitalism, and popular culture.

Religious Studies professor Dr. Kati Curts visits the AWM to discuss her book Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America, which illustrates how Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel. 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 is the free livestream of an in person program at the American Writers Museum. When you register for this event, you will receive access to the livestream link. If you would like to attend the program in person at the AWM, get your tickets here.
This program is presented in conjunction with the AWM’s special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, a powerful new exhibit that takes you on the ultimate exploration through spirituality and storytelling. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.

More about Assembling Religion:
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.
Praise for Assembling Religion:
“Tells a powerful story about an iconic brand and cultural agent that transformed life in and far beyond the United States. The religious feature of this story is eye-opening, and rigorously researched… Will quickly earn an important place in the literature on American history, religion, technology, and business.”
—David Morgan, author of The Thing about Religion: An Introduction to the Material Study of Religions
“A brilliant advance in the study of religion, this book sees through the prevailing secular myth of Henry Ford to expose Ford’s pervasive religious myth-making in American life. Assembling Religion revitalizes key terms of analysis, such as myth, ritual, and the sacred, while demonstrating how they work in the world. Kati Curts is a new strong voice in the ongoing work of mediating the familiar and the surprising in American religion and culture.”
—David Chidester, author of Religion: Material Dynamics
DR. KATI CURTS is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Sewanee: The University of the South. She is a historian of religion, specializing in the history and culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. She teaches courses and researches at the intersections of religion, capitalism, and popular culture.

The best night of the year is back: Grown-Up Book Fair! With books for sale, games to play, and drinks to drink… cheers!
Indulge your literary impulses at Get Lit: Grown-Up Book Fair! Mix and mingle with fellow bookworms, share your favorite titles, and discover new ones. From cozy mysteries to epic adventures, there’s something for every reader to discover and enjoy! Vendors and tabling partners to be announced!

This is 21+ event. Attendees must show a valid photo ID at the door to enter.

Get Lit is your way to enjoy evenings in the Loop. Meet friends and fellow book nerds for an early evening treat. Each month, the AWM serves drinks, games, special experiences, and fun activities to get you lit! Funds raised at this event go towards the AWM’s Write In Youth Education Program, which serves middle and high school students from under-resourced schools. See our other upcoming GET LIT events here.

American Prophets Workshop: Writing Religion with Andrew Krivák
A generative, first-person writing workshop about religion, spirituality, and faith with ational Book Award finalist Andrew Krivák (The Sojourn, The Bear). Co-presented by StoryStudio Chicago.
This program is presented in conjunction with the AWM’s special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture, a powerful new exhibit that takes you on the ultimate exploration through spirituality and storytelling. American Prophets is supported by a grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through its Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative.
More about the workshop from Andrew Krivák:
This workshop is intended for students who are interested in writing longer form narratives from the first-person point of view. The “I” at the center of any writing poses a perspective that is all at once imaginatively powerful and narratively problematic, uniquely insightful and necessarily unreliable.
What I hope to suggest in the two hours we’ll be together is that writing in the first-person point of view is primarily—and most interestingly—a means toward salvation, which is to say, a kind of healing (from the Greek sozo). Thus, we’ll consider the question of not simply why do writers write in the first-person but why do you want to write in the first-person? Students ought to be working on, or have in mind, a piece of writing they want to tell in the first-person. The workshop aspect of the two hours will consist of drafting and honing first paragraphs.
I would also like to ask students to have read, or be familiar with, one of four novels: A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean; Austerlitz, by W.G. Sebald; Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson; and Lost Children Archive, by Valeria Luiselli. Of course, any favorite novel in the first-person brought up in the discussion will be welcome.
ANDREW KRIVÁK is the author of five novels, two chapbooks of poetry, and two works of nonfiction. His 2011 debut novel, The Sojourn, was a National Book Award finalist and winner of both the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for fiction and the inaugural Chautauqua Prize. He followed The Sojourn with The Signal Flame, set in fictional Dardan, Pennsylvania. His third novel, The Bear, received the Banff Mountain Book Prize for fiction, the Massachusetts Book Award, and was a four-year National Endowment for the Arts Big Read title. Like the Appearance of Horses, released in 2023, returned to the characters and landscape of Dardan, Pennsylvania and was a Library Journal selection for “Best Literary Fiction of 2023.” His fifth novel, Mule Boy, will be released February 24, 2026.
As a poet, Andrew has published the short collections Islands, and Ghosts of the Monadnock Wolves, and in 2025 received the Moth Poetry Prize. He is also author of the memoir A Long Retreat: In Search of a Religious Life, and editor of The Letters of William Carlos Williams to Edgar Irving Williams, 1902-1912, which won the Louis Martz Prize for scholarly research on William Carlos Williams. He holds a BA from St. John’s College, Annapolis; an MFA in poetry from Columbia University; an MA in philosophy from Fordham; and a PhD in literary modernism from Rutgers.
Currently, Andrew is a discussion facilitator with the New Hampshire Department of Corrections Family Connections Center, and a Visiting Lecturer on English at Harvard. He lives with his wife and three children in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire.
StoryStudio Chicago is a nonprofit literary arts organization focused on building a writing community. They offer more than 200 online and in-person creative writing classes and events each year, which include everything from single-session classes focused on one aspect of craft to multi-session weekly classes to full year-long programs. They nurture writers of all ages and all skill levels, and their programming covers all genres, from short stories and novels, to creative nonfiction like memoirs and essays to poetry, screenwriting, satire, and just about anything you can imagine.