In an examination of religion coverage in
Time,
Newsweek,
Life,
The Saturday Evening Post,
Ebony,
Christianity Today,
National Review,
and other news and special interest magazines, Sean McCloud
combines religious history and social theory to analyze how and why
mass-market magazines depicted religions as "mainstream" or
"fringe" in the post-World War II United States. McCloud argues
that in assuming an American mainstream that was white, middle
class, and religiously liberal, journalists in the largest
magazines, under the guise of objective reporting, offered a
spiritual apologetics for the dominant social order.
McCloud analyzes articles on a wide range of religious movements
from the 1950s through the early 1990s, including Pentecostalism,
the Nation of Islam, California cults, the Jesus movement, South
Asian gurus, and occult spirituality. He shows that, in portraying
certain beliefs as "fringe," magazines evoked long-standing debates
in American religious history about emotional versus rational
religion, exotic versus familiar spirituality, and normal versus
abnormal levels of piety. He also traces the shifting line between
mainstream and fringe, showing how such boundary shifts coincided
with larger changes in society, culture, and the magazine industry.
McCloud's astute analysis helps us understand both broad
conceptions of religion in the United States and the role of mass
media in American society.