Assembling Religion

How Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospelHenry Ford did not just mass produce cars. As a member of the Episcopal Church, reader of New Thought texts, believer in the "e;gospel of reincarnation,"e; mass marketer of antisemitic material, and employer who institutionalized a social gospel, Henry Fords contributions to American models of business were informed by and produced for an America he understood to be broadly Christian. Though Fords 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 Fords archive, it examines Fords 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 Fords impact on culture, commerce, and the technology of labor.