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Consuming Religion
What are you drawn to like, to watch, or even to binge? What are you free to consume, and what do you become through consumption? These questions of desire and value, Kathryn Lofton argues, are questions for the study of religion. In eleven essays exploring soap and office cubicles, Britney Spears and the Kardashians, corporate culture and Goldman Sachs, Lofton shows the conceptual levers of religion in thinking about social modes of encounter, use, and longing. Wherever we see people articulate their dreams of and for the world, wherever we see those dreams organized into protocols, images, manuals, and contracts, we glimpse what the word “religion” allows us to describe and understand. With great style and analytical acumen, Lofton offers the ultimate guide to religion and consumption in our capitalizing times.
352 pages, Paperback
Published September 12, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 1, 2020
One of the most urgent books (series of related essays) I've ever read. Lofton shows us how to question the structures around us and the way that our participation in those systems -- namely consumerism -- actually affects our lives.
Prof. Lofton does the work of demonstrating that religion in the United States operates on a consumeristic model and that consumerism operates on religious idiom. In so doing she unearths myriad qualities of our realities, often in provocative fashion.
Fundamentally, I think, she is suggesting that there are other ways, healthier ones, to operate in this world than consumerism. She does not offer another neatly packaged system or way of being, but at least helps show the value of slowing down to ask ourselves why we relate to each other and to the data of our world the way that we do. She is generous or at least humanistic in her criticisms. She is a model to follow in thoughtful critical scholarship at the intersection of religion and the world around us.
Prof. Lofton does the work of demonstrating that religion in the United States operates on a consumeristic model and that consumerism operates on religious idiom. In so doing she unearths myriad qualities of our realities, often in provocative fashion.
Fundamentally, I think, she is suggesting that there are other ways, healthier ones, to operate in this world than consumerism. She does not offer another neatly packaged system or way of being, but at least helps show the value of slowing down to ask ourselves why we relate to each other and to the data of our world the way that we do. She is generous or at least humanistic in her criticisms. She is a model to follow in thoughtful critical scholarship at the intersection of religion and the world around us.
July 8, 2022
this is my first time reading a whole book of lofton’s and it did not disappoint! i know a lot of historians take issue with her method, and i can see why. some of the essays in this book brush a bit too lightly over dense historiographical debates. but i happen to think that critique misses what the book is trying to do. if you want a deep history text that engages immense bibliographies, there are books that explicitly engage that kind of work. now, if the critique is that these brushes of history are inaccurate, that’s of course a different thing. but i’m not an expert on these histories, so i can’t speak to it.
that being said, this is a book about pushing the boundaries of how we think about the category of religion in order to locate it in contemporary consumer society. and it does a better job of this than pretty much anything else i’ve read. in doing so, it enriches and legitimates the study of religion by showing the vitality of religion in the secular world while also challenging us to think about the category differently. huge fan and would highly recommend.
that being said, this is a book about pushing the boundaries of how we think about the category of religion in order to locate it in contemporary consumer society. and it does a better job of this than pretty much anything else i’ve read. in doing so, it enriches and legitimates the study of religion by showing the vitality of religion in the secular world while also challenging us to think about the category differently. huge fan and would highly recommend.
September 24, 2020
Excellent book on the relationship with religion and consumption in modern America.
February 2, 2024
finalllyyyy finished this. kathryn lofton is so brilliant and i worship her and all of her research, but this woman is allergic to writing a clear thesis statement.
November 9, 2019
Yes, consumer culture as operative religion. Yes, tracking of desire’s malleability. Yes, coined terms like “baby-ism” to reference Britney Spears’s: “My baby is my religion.” Yes.
May 9, 2019
If read as a critique of neoliberal capitalism, 5 stars. If read as an acceptance or celebration of neoliberal capitalism, -5 stars.
November 29, 2022
Lofton essentially collects a series of essays about religion and its interactions with a modern America built on consumer capitalism. She is interested in blurring the lines we typically enforce between "religion" and "everything else" – is bingeing TV shows religion? Obsessing over celebrities? Given her definition, the answer may well be yes. Lofton describes religion as "a way to think about social modes of encounter, interaction, and development," as an organizing tool, especially between insiders and outsiders.
This idea isn't particularly new. Lofton spends a lot of time talking about Durkheim and his ideas about religion and tthe way society uses it to organizes the sacred and profane. And in the ARH world, ongoing research into how religion served as a proto-racial category to determine the free and the slave, the civilized and the heathen, the powerful and the marginalized. Religion is "a way of describing structures by which we are bound or connected to one another ... [and] describing structures by which we distinguish ourselves from others." (p. 5) Lofton further argues that American capitalism seems to have pushed aside traditional religious categories by monetizing value: The cultures and objects that used to be religious are now commoditized. Drawing on Marx, she points out that "markets produce poverty, and the illusion that poverty is inevitable. One word for such a proxy consciousness is religion" (p. 12).
In Chapter 1, Lofton compares binging streamed shows to fundamentalism, which she defines as "a rhetorical act of corporate self-preservation." It relies on a "psychology of chaos" in which the world is declining. "It is a claim of reinstated order after a named destabilization" (24). Binge watching, therefore, can be a sort of similarly extreme ritual practice that imposes order amid technological chaos.
Chapter 6 is an interesting analysis of USA Today celebrity coverage , and she brings a refreshingly nuanced perspective to the question of how news media tend to cover religion. She argues that although secularization theses claim a diminished role for religion in American life, a better way of approaching the question is to explore "how religion forms itself in the modern era ... outside institutional forms of religious ideation and practice" (p. 125).
Lofton points out that religion in news media tends to be "wielded as a consolidated concept" notwithstanding a great amount of pluralism within the amorphous category of religion, never mind the actual groups that fall under that label. She notices that USAT seemed to play a role in upholding certain values that one would not expect a secular newspaper to do. This gets to what Winston, et al., argue about the history of news media: that newspapers have long implicitly had at the core of their mission the upholding of certain values that more or less correspond to the American civic religion. As science and objectivity took over for religion as the arbiter of "secular" civic values, newspapers moved toward a more skeptical stance regarding religion. In the case of Madonna and her critics, USAT rallied to the defense of the artist's freedom to express herself over and against the critic's attempt to silence her through boycotting her sponsors. Lofton argues this is not merely a case of journalists upholding First Amendment values (although maybe that's all this is?), but rather of upholding the "genre codes of consumer capitalism" (132). Maybe? But maybe it's also just one institution reliant on the First Amendment taking an understandably pragmatic stance defending the values of the amendment in a separate controversy.
Lofton is much less nuanced – and much more incoherent – in Chapter 8, an otherwise fascinating exploration of the Kardashian family. She starts, however, with a baffling defense of Melissa Click, a Missouri communications professor who was fired after calling for "muscle" against a student journalist covering a public protest on campus. Lofton wants to turn this into a question about gender and the role of the Missouri state legislature in higher education, but she can only do so if she ignores entirely the power dynamic in play when a professor calls for physical violence against a student. That's unacceptable in any circumstance. That the student was a journalist on a public campus covering a public event simply makes the situation worse. Once again, a religion scholar seems uninterested in displaying even a modicum of fairness toward news media, even when the member of the news media is a student being threatened with violence by a professor.
This idea isn't particularly new. Lofton spends a lot of time talking about Durkheim and his ideas about religion and tthe way society uses it to organizes the sacred and profane. And in the ARH world, ongoing research into how religion served as a proto-racial category to determine the free and the slave, the civilized and the heathen, the powerful and the marginalized. Religion is "a way of describing structures by which we are bound or connected to one another ... [and] describing structures by which we distinguish ourselves from others." (p. 5) Lofton further argues that American capitalism seems to have pushed aside traditional religious categories by monetizing value: The cultures and objects that used to be religious are now commoditized. Drawing on Marx, she points out that "markets produce poverty, and the illusion that poverty is inevitable. One word for such a proxy consciousness is religion" (p. 12).
In Chapter 1, Lofton compares binging streamed shows to fundamentalism, which she defines as "a rhetorical act of corporate self-preservation." It relies on a "psychology of chaos" in which the world is declining. "It is a claim of reinstated order after a named destabilization" (24). Binge watching, therefore, can be a sort of similarly extreme ritual practice that imposes order amid technological chaos.
Chapter 6 is an interesting analysis of USA Today celebrity coverage , and she brings a refreshingly nuanced perspective to the question of how news media tend to cover religion. She argues that although secularization theses claim a diminished role for religion in American life, a better way of approaching the question is to explore "how religion forms itself in the modern era ... outside institutional forms of religious ideation and practice" (p. 125).
Lofton points out that religion in news media tends to be "wielded as a consolidated concept" notwithstanding a great amount of pluralism within the amorphous category of religion, never mind the actual groups that fall under that label. She notices that USAT seemed to play a role in upholding certain values that one would not expect a secular newspaper to do. This gets to what Winston, et al., argue about the history of news media: that newspapers have long implicitly had at the core of their mission the upholding of certain values that more or less correspond to the American civic religion. As science and objectivity took over for religion as the arbiter of "secular" civic values, newspapers moved toward a more skeptical stance regarding religion. In the case of Madonna and her critics, USAT rallied to the defense of the artist's freedom to express herself over and against the critic's attempt to silence her through boycotting her sponsors. Lofton argues this is not merely a case of journalists upholding First Amendment values (although maybe that's all this is?), but rather of upholding the "genre codes of consumer capitalism" (132). Maybe? But maybe it's also just one institution reliant on the First Amendment taking an understandably pragmatic stance defending the values of the amendment in a separate controversy.
Lofton is much less nuanced – and much more incoherent – in Chapter 8, an otherwise fascinating exploration of the Kardashian family. She starts, however, with a baffling defense of Melissa Click, a Missouri communications professor who was fired after calling for "muscle" against a student journalist covering a public protest on campus. Lofton wants to turn this into a question about gender and the role of the Missouri state legislature in higher education, but she can only do so if she ignores entirely the power dynamic in play when a professor calls for physical violence against a student. That's unacceptable in any circumstance. That the student was a journalist on a public campus covering a public event simply makes the situation worse. Once again, a religion scholar seems uninterested in displaying even a modicum of fairness toward news media, even when the member of the news media is a student being threatened with violence by a professor.
November 8, 2025
Kathryn Lofton’s Consuming Religion raises the claim that human beings subsumed by consumer culture and that it has become a form of religion. Throughout the book, she is in conversation with Max Weber and Émile Durkheim— drawing in parts from a durkheimian definition of religion as a social effervescence.
While her claims are by no means original or ground-breaking, I initially had fun with the fact that she looks to popular culture for her sources. It was silly to read Andrew Garfield’s name in a book I had to read for class! As someone who desires to study religion at the highest level, I appreciated that she is wanting to bring fresh takes and new voices to the field.
However, I could only follow her writing style for so long. It became somewhat exhausting during the chapter on Goldman Sachs. One second she’s talking about the financial aspects of the company, the next she is describing the role of the religious studies scholar, and somehow linking this all to being religion? There is a similar issue in the first chapter, where she is expounding on the motives of the 9/11 attackers and then connects that to binge watching a show and then connects that to ‘secular religiosity’? I see the tread, but it jumps around too much without justification.
In all, there are some unarguably brilliant points to speak to in this work but for the most part the message gets lost Lofton’s writing style for me. I would recommend for the sake of reading Lofton’s scholarship, as she is at the top of her game, but there are probably better books that bridge the connection between religion and consumer culture.
While her claims are by no means original or ground-breaking, I initially had fun with the fact that she looks to popular culture for her sources. It was silly to read Andrew Garfield’s name in a book I had to read for class! As someone who desires to study religion at the highest level, I appreciated that she is wanting to bring fresh takes and new voices to the field.
However, I could only follow her writing style for so long. It became somewhat exhausting during the chapter on Goldman Sachs. One second she’s talking about the financial aspects of the company, the next she is describing the role of the religious studies scholar, and somehow linking this all to being religion? There is a similar issue in the first chapter, where she is expounding on the motives of the 9/11 attackers and then connects that to binge watching a show and then connects that to ‘secular religiosity’? I see the tread, but it jumps around too much without justification.
In all, there are some unarguably brilliant points to speak to in this work but for the most part the message gets lost Lofton’s writing style for me. I would recommend for the sake of reading Lofton’s scholarship, as she is at the top of her game, but there are probably better books that bridge the connection between religion and consumer culture.
March 10, 2024
Not gonna lie, this was a bit of a challenge for me. I haven't read a seriously academic book since school ended (and low key, this was pretty up there in terms of like conceptual difficulty and vocabulary for me like I low key would've benefitted from a thesaurus in some places) so this was a bit of a slog to get through sometimes, but it was generally good. I found it very interesting how the author discusses different ways that religious formations show up in American life, my favorite chapters being about soap and cleanliness, the religion of parenting, and the Kardashian chapters. I also thought the Goldman chapter was interesting as well as the whole discussion of corporate culture and the evolution of all that. Some of the financial language about markets was hard to parse because a lot of my knowledge of the 2008 financial crisis is from the movie The Big Short (2015), but yeah it do be crazy how corporations operate like sects. Lots of food for thought for sure.
November 22, 2018
5/5 - Wow! What a fascinating take on religion! I don’t know if I agree with Lofton’s approach, but I was fascinated by it. She asserts that religion is anything that you consume that also consumes your life. Very interesting!
March 23, 2024
This book presented some interesting lenses to view culture and religion, but was often from an angle (such as corporate structure and practice) that I found uninteresting personally. Surprisingly, the most insightful chapter for me was the one about the Kardashians.
April 20, 2020
i wanted to looooooove this book but sometimes i was like.... girl, this seems a bit of a stretch and also are you maybe conflating ritual with religion?
December 31, 2023
Aka Sophie is going to start a NRM
May 11, 2025
read for school, interesting concept but pretty dense
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews