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Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America
What can the religious objects used by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Americans tell us about American Christianity? What is the relationship between the beliefs of the faithful and the landscapes they build? This lavishly illustrated book investigates the history and meaning of Christian material culture in America over the last 150 years.
Drawing on a rich array of historical sources and on in-depth interviews with Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons, Colleen McDannell examines the relationship between religion and mass consumption. She describes examples of nineteenth-century religious Victorians burying their dead in cultivated cemetery parks; Protestants producing and displaying elaborate family Bibles; Catholics writing for special water from Lourdes reputed to have miraculous powers. And she looks at today's Mormons wearing sacred underclothing as a reminder of their religious promises, Catholics debating the design of tasteful churches, and Protestants manufacturing, marketing, and using a vast array of prints, clothing, figurines, jewelry, and toys that some label "Jesus junk" but that others see as a witness to their faith. McDannell claims that previous studies of American Christianity have overemphasized the written, cognitive, and ethical dimensions of religion, presenting faith as a disembodied system of beliefs. She shifts attention from the church and the theological seminary to the workplace, home, cemetery, and Sunday school, highlighting a different Christianity―one in which average Christians experience the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the meaning of community through interacting with a created world of devotional images, environments, and objects.
Drawing on a rich array of historical sources and on in-depth interviews with Protestants, Catholics, and Mormons, Colleen McDannell examines the relationship between religion and mass consumption. She describes examples of nineteenth-century religious Victorians burying their dead in cultivated cemetery parks; Protestants producing and displaying elaborate family Bibles; Catholics writing for special water from Lourdes reputed to have miraculous powers. And she looks at today's Mormons wearing sacred underclothing as a reminder of their religious promises, Catholics debating the design of tasteful churches, and Protestants manufacturing, marketing, and using a vast array of prints, clothing, figurines, jewelry, and toys that some label "Jesus junk" but that others see as a witness to their faith. McDannell claims that previous studies of American Christianity have overemphasized the written, cognitive, and ethical dimensions of religion, presenting faith as a disembodied system of beliefs. She shifts attention from the church and the theological seminary to the workplace, home, cemetery, and Sunday school, highlighting a different Christianity―one in which average Christians experience the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the meaning of community through interacting with a created world of devotional images, environments, and objects.
324 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 14, 2021
This great book is apparently a foundational text in the study of religious material culture – which is to say, the study of religious history through the materials religious people use and/or display. Of course, there's a lot of definition required there: What is religion, what are materials, how do you decide what constitutes a religious material, versus a secular/profane one?
That last question is an especially tricky one. Colleen McDannell takes special exception to the notion, propounded by Durkheim, that there is a clear divide between the sacred and the profane. Rather, she argues, profane spaces and objects can become sacralized depending on how they're used by the religious. As examples, she explores the pride of place given to family Bibles in the Victorian era, the establishment of Laurel Hill cemetery in Philadelphia, portraits of Jesus in Catholic and Protestant contexts in the mid 20th century, Mormon undergarments, and the flood of kitsch sold through Christian bookstores until they were decimated by the internet.
McDannell gives plenty of food for thought, including challenging the popular notion that Protestant religion is less "material" than Catholicism. She also shies away from challenging her own arguments – for example, arguing that unseen and unexamined non-religious structures can facilitate the creation and distribution of religious materials such as healing water from Lourdes sent to American Catholics in the late 19th century by priests from the University of Notre Dame who imported it from France. But she doesn't extend this observation to the function of capitalism in the explosive growth of Christian bookstores in the late 20th century. As a result, she fails to truly explore the mixture of Protestantism in particular with American civic religion. The toxic effects of muddying these two religions are clearer in 2021 than they were in 1995; nevertheless, the intermarriage was already well under way for decades by that point, and the question of what makes an object sacred, a system profane or vice-versa was no less relevant then than now.
Another quibble is that the book focuses overwhelmingly on White Christians – the Black church is almost nonexistent, and in one embarrassing instance, McDannell claims Catholics in the United States were of German or Irish ethnicity and lived mainly in the East and Midwest – completely erasing from the picture Spanish-speaking Mexican American Catholics from the Southwest.
Still, all of that said, Material Christianity is easy to read, chock full of fascinating historical tidbits, and a paradigm-shifting work of American religious history. Well worth reading for anyone interested in the subject.
That last question is an especially tricky one. Colleen McDannell takes special exception to the notion, propounded by Durkheim, that there is a clear divide between the sacred and the profane. Rather, she argues, profane spaces and objects can become sacralized depending on how they're used by the religious. As examples, she explores the pride of place given to family Bibles in the Victorian era, the establishment of Laurel Hill cemetery in Philadelphia, portraits of Jesus in Catholic and Protestant contexts in the mid 20th century, Mormon undergarments, and the flood of kitsch sold through Christian bookstores until they were decimated by the internet.
McDannell gives plenty of food for thought, including challenging the popular notion that Protestant religion is less "material" than Catholicism. She also shies away from challenging her own arguments – for example, arguing that unseen and unexamined non-religious structures can facilitate the creation and distribution of religious materials such as healing water from Lourdes sent to American Catholics in the late 19th century by priests from the University of Notre Dame who imported it from France. But she doesn't extend this observation to the function of capitalism in the explosive growth of Christian bookstores in the late 20th century. As a result, she fails to truly explore the mixture of Protestantism in particular with American civic religion. The toxic effects of muddying these two religions are clearer in 2021 than they were in 1995; nevertheless, the intermarriage was already well under way for decades by that point, and the question of what makes an object sacred, a system profane or vice-versa was no less relevant then than now.
Another quibble is that the book focuses overwhelmingly on White Christians – the Black church is almost nonexistent, and in one embarrassing instance, McDannell claims Catholics in the United States were of German or Irish ethnicity and lived mainly in the East and Midwest – completely erasing from the picture Spanish-speaking Mexican American Catholics from the Southwest.
Still, all of that said, Material Christianity is easy to read, chock full of fascinating historical tidbits, and a paradigm-shifting work of American religious history. Well worth reading for anyone interested in the subject.
May 10, 2014
“American Christians . . . want to see, hear, and touch God. It is not enough for Christians to go to church, lead a righteous life, and hope for an eventual place in heaven. People build religion into the landscape, they make and buy pious images for their homes, and they wear special reminders of their faith next to their bodies. Religion is more than a type of knowledge learned through reading holy books and listening to holy men. The physical expressions of religion are not exotic or eccentric elements that can be relegated to a particular community or a specific period of time. Throughout American history, Christians have explored the meaning of the divine, the nature of death, the power of healing, and the experience of the body by interacting with a created world of images and shapes.” (1).
People learn their religion through “the material dimension of Christianity.” They practice their religion. “The symbol systems of a particular religious language are not merely handed down, they must be learned through doing, seeing, and touching. “ “Experiencing the physical dimension of religion helps bring about religious values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes” (2).
“Cultivated nature, what may be called ‘landscape,’ also comprises part of the material dimension of American life. The natural environment undergoes a transformation when trees are planted, roads paved, houses built, and churches constructed” (3).
“People manipulate nature, sometimes subtly and frequently powerfully, to express their communal and personal values” (3).
“Religious landscapes have also been, and continue to be, constructed throughout the United States. Christianity is not practiced only in churches” (3).
“If we look at what Christians do rather than at what they think, we cannot help but notice the continual scrambling of the sacred and the profane. Likewise, by focusing on material Christianity we can no longer uncritically accept the secularization model” (4).
“If social scientists see only the profane and religionists see only the sacred, then both miss the ways Christians combine these concepts” (7).
A few samples (above) from McDannell's Introduction reveal her basic argument that the material dimension of religion (from architecture to clothing to crosses to icons) tells a much more complicated story of religious belief than written sources viewed alone. She also is adamant that people of all denominations and socioeconomic backgrounds engage in materiality in one form or another that can both be compared and contrasted with others:
“In hope of moving beyond the equation of Christianity with the white, Protestant middle class, I introduce evidence from people of color, from the poor, and from Catholics and Mormons. I do this not only to be inclusive but also to illustrate my view that diverse peoples use religious objects in very similar ways” (18).
I found the essay entitled “Mormon Garments: Sacred Clothing and the Body” (198-221) particularly interesting. While she acknowledges that the subject has near taboo status in the Mormon Church, she does a rather commendable job getting at the cultural complexity and (mis)understandings surrounding the garment of the holy priesthood worn daily by adult (post-mission or post-marriage) Mormons. Among her historical research and cultural assertions based upon interviews, one of her most interesting observations (which I agree with) follows:
“In many ways, Mormonism in Utah is more like an ethnic group than a religion. People who have been raised Mormon but either leave the church or are expelled from it, still find that they think and act ‘Mormon.’ Their identity is defined less by theological concepts or ritual activities and more by a sense of collective history and sociological behaviors” (208).
People learn their religion through “the material dimension of Christianity.” They practice their religion. “The symbol systems of a particular religious language are not merely handed down, they must be learned through doing, seeing, and touching. “ “Experiencing the physical dimension of religion helps bring about religious values, norms, behaviors, and attitudes” (2).
“Cultivated nature, what may be called ‘landscape,’ also comprises part of the material dimension of American life. The natural environment undergoes a transformation when trees are planted, roads paved, houses built, and churches constructed” (3).
“People manipulate nature, sometimes subtly and frequently powerfully, to express their communal and personal values” (3).
“Religious landscapes have also been, and continue to be, constructed throughout the United States. Christianity is not practiced only in churches” (3).
“If we look at what Christians do rather than at what they think, we cannot help but notice the continual scrambling of the sacred and the profane. Likewise, by focusing on material Christianity we can no longer uncritically accept the secularization model” (4).
“If social scientists see only the profane and religionists see only the sacred, then both miss the ways Christians combine these concepts” (7).
A few samples (above) from McDannell's Introduction reveal her basic argument that the material dimension of religion (from architecture to clothing to crosses to icons) tells a much more complicated story of religious belief than written sources viewed alone. She also is adamant that people of all denominations and socioeconomic backgrounds engage in materiality in one form or another that can both be compared and contrasted with others:
“In hope of moving beyond the equation of Christianity with the white, Protestant middle class, I introduce evidence from people of color, from the poor, and from Catholics and Mormons. I do this not only to be inclusive but also to illustrate my view that diverse peoples use religious objects in very similar ways” (18).
I found the essay entitled “Mormon Garments: Sacred Clothing and the Body” (198-221) particularly interesting. While she acknowledges that the subject has near taboo status in the Mormon Church, she does a rather commendable job getting at the cultural complexity and (mis)understandings surrounding the garment of the holy priesthood worn daily by adult (post-mission or post-marriage) Mormons. Among her historical research and cultural assertions based upon interviews, one of her most interesting observations (which I agree with) follows:
“In many ways, Mormonism in Utah is more like an ethnic group than a religion. People who have been raised Mormon but either leave the church or are expelled from it, still find that they think and act ‘Mormon.’ Their identity is defined less by theological concepts or ritual activities and more by a sense of collective history and sociological behaviors” (208).
October 4, 2012
Talks about Christian kitsch and cemetaries, so it should be on a reading list for understanding Southerners.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews