Locating Religious Dimensions in the History of Advertising

Abstract

Americans live in a world where advertisements bombard them incessantly with images of power and the “good life.”¹ Since the Industrial Revolution, advertising has reflected the desires of a society that needed more than just facts; it needed hope, love, and security. Many social critics, employing religious language, have described advertising as a kind of “salvific experience,” a “system of magical inducements,” that replaced the declining traditional institutions at the beginning of the twentieth century.² This critique demands that we not view the role of advertising in a cultural vacuum; indeed, there are various economic, sociological, and religious changes that have contributed to the emerging role of advertising as a totemic mediator in the culture of consumer capitalism.³

Whoever has the power to project a vision of the good life and make it prevail has the most decisive power of all.

—William Leach