“Cookies to serve God’s glory”: the St Roger Abbey organic French patisserie as a religious and secular site

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines a small French patisserie in the Chicago suburbs, St Roger Abbey, operated by the Fraternité Notre Dame, a Marian devotional movement. Using visual analysis of the physical space and product packaging, and textual analysis of their marketing material, I argue that the patisserie’s proprietors deploy religious symbols and concepts to invoke, both explicitly and implicitly, authenticity and value, drawing from a reservoir of cultural nostalgia and exoticism. St Roger Abbey markets itself as offering the spiritual authenticity of the premodern, allowing individuals figuratively and literally to consume these markers of nostalgia and authenticity and, in doing so, reinforce their constructed identities within the sanctioned bounds of contemporary neoliberal capitalism. The case of St Roger Abbey challenges social models that emphasize a secular/religious divide.