Ordained by Capital: Conscripting Religion in Corporate America
Publication information:
Vander_Tuig, Adam. 2023. “Ordained by Capital: Conscripting Religion in Corporate America.” in Uses and Abuses of Power in Alternative Spiritualities. Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Abstract
Abstract: Corporate clergy. Ritual consultants. Sacred designers. Tech industry companies so deeply and thoroughly installing religious grammar and culture into their corporate ecologies that business managers refer to themselves as “head pastors” and human resource directors shepherd the souls of employees. This paper argues that the alternative spiritualities refashioned and championed by corporate America deliberately accommodate and exacerbate socioeconomic inequality and subvert the public good, marshalling the power of capital to manipulate and remake religiosity into its own image while marshalling the power of religion to sanctify and ordain capital.
Presenter bio: Adam Vander Tuig is a PhD candidate at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, a candidate for ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, the University of Cambridge, and Nebraska Wesleyan University.
Affiliation: Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
Presenter bio: Adam Vander Tuig is a PhD candidate at Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, a candidate for ministry in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), and a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, the University of Cambridge, and Nebraska Wesleyan University.
Affiliation: Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York