What does a motor company and its founder have to do with religion in America? A lot, it turns out. 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, the Motor King was explicit that his work in engineering and auto production was prophetic and meant to remake the world. This talk offers a religious history of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company, repositioning them within critical studies of religion and examining how Ford transformed American religion in the twentieth century. 

Kati Curts is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at 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 and researches at the intersections of religion, capitalism, and popular culture. Her book, Assembling Religion: The Ford Motor Company and the Transformation of Religion in America, is available now.