A Consuming Faith

Abstract

This chapter charts the key pivot by corporate evangelicals at the Moody Bible Institute (MBI), from religious identities rooted in Christian work to consumer identities branded as “pure religion.” Evangelicals at the MBI had forged a consuming faith from the ideological overlap between modern consumer capitalism and religion—both advertisers and evangelists were tackling the same problem of individual human choice, after all, and both groups welcomed any art or science that gave them an advantage. The ideas that had been lifted from marketing and advertising strategies helped transition evangelicals from Moody's conviction that an authentic faith produced Christian workers to a new ideal embodied by the savvy consumer—a believer who rightly judged and appropriated correct belief and practice from the options in the religious marketplace.