Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and Religion (IN PERSON)

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.