Brands of Faith: Marketing Religion in a Commercial Age (review)

As a media studies scholar, business school professor, and former marketing executive, Mara Einstein brings a unique perspective to the study of American religion. Brands of Faith focuses upon the proliferation of religious marketing in the past twenty years. It suggests that more freedom to choose one's religious vantage, combined with a greater availability of options proffered by media outlets, has created a contemporary situation in which faiths must pay attention to branding issues like all other commodities. Throughout, the author keenly details the various negotiations necessary to market religion and thereby describes the "delicate dance" that must be done to "remain relevant while at the same time remaining true to one's faith" (15).

Einstein includes many details regarding religious products in the publishing, television, and film industries. Texts such as Left Behind and The Purpose Driven Life and movies like the The Passion of the Christ and The Da Vinci Code are adroitly situated within their larger business environments and then dissected to reveal the marketing techniques that brought them to prominence. The early chapters offer a refreshing approach through seriously engaging many cultural texts that some might write off as too popular to be academically relevant. Avoiding such pretense, Einstein analyzes religious commodities in a manner that reflects their pervasiveness, and thus import, in American culture.

Einstein takes aforementioned market successes one step further to demonstrate how such products often attract people to and even change the internal dynamics of American megachurches. Such organizations then tend to more thoroughly focus on their own "consumer appeal" in light of the spectacular success of these products. Her analysis of the "brand messages" associated with Rick Warren and Joel Osteen reveals the nuanced use of books, television programs, direct mail, and other devices to sell products, while simultaneously making their home churches and themselves into a desirable "brand."

In her final chapters, Einstein sometimes adopts a polemical tone that is out of step with her earlier careful and data-filled observations. For instance, an examination of Kabbalah describes its various money-making practices as "blatant consumerism" with little regard for the true needs of spiritual seekers. Subsequent coverage of the political role of faith brands criticizes ways in which megachurches elide their conservative agendas because they believe that these vantages will drive away potential congregants. According to Einstein, pastors like Rick Warren are being disingenuous when claiming to be non-political in approach and use marketing techniques that elide distinct ideologies.

In the final chapter, Einstein offers her primary criticism of religious branding. As faith increasingly becomes a commodity like all others and as groups struggle with each other for members, religion has changed from "what people need to what people want" (192). Harkening upon social gospel approaches, Einstein decries a mounting inability to censure the machinations of capitalism or more generally speak to life's problems. Many of the most popular faith brands are now so thoroughly embedded within a market approach prefaced on positive messages that they offer overly facile solutions to tribulations or avoid them all together. Ultimately, Brands of Faith is a welcome addition to the larger body of work on religion and consumer culture. Because of Einstein's business acumen, she offers a perspective unavailable to most religion scholars. Although she lists in a contentious direction at times, the book is nevertheless a lively read that will enlighten those looking for an interpretive lens through which to view the spectacular success of contemporary religious commodities.