This week, religious studies professor Dr. Kati Curts discusses her book Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America, which illustrates how Henry Ford institutionalized a social gospel. Though Ford's 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.

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This episode is presented in conjunction with the American Writers Museum's new special exhibit American Prophets: Writers, Religion, and Culture. This exhibit and programming series explores the profound ways writing reflects and influences our understanding of religion. American Prophets is now open.

This conversation originally took place March 5, 2026 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum.

More about Assembling Religion:

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

DR. KATI CURTS is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Sewanee: The University of the South. She is a historian of religion, specializing in the history and culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. She teaches courses and researches at the intersections of religion, capitalism, and popular culture.

Episode 230: Kati Curts