Megachurch-Industrial Complex : Searching for Transcendence in the Culture Industry

A Las Vegas megachurch transforms faith into spectacle to attract the unchurched, even as its iconoclastic approach strains longstanding religious and cultural traditions.

Drawing on critical theory, media studies, and the sociology of religion, Josiah Kidwell situates the church’s evolution within broader patterns of rationalization in civil society and the spectacle-driven urban landscape of Las Vegas. Using extensive fieldwork, he chronicles the church’s shift into an entertainment-oriented religious franchise and unpacks the cultural trade-offs that accompany this change. Kidwell explores how the leadership’s organizational approach and use of new media and popular culture reshape place attachment, recast communal life, and introduce the one-dimensional logic of the culture industry. Throughout, Kidwell resists deterministic accounts, highlighting how members interpret, negotiate, and sometimes push back against these changes while also revealing the subtle erosions they produce in social life. Ultimately, this book offers a sharp, multilayered portrait of religion’s adaptation to an entertainment-saturated society—and will be of interest to scholars of religion, media studies, cultural sociology, and anyone curious about the future of communal life in an age of spectacle.