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Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America

Online ISBN:
9780199835683
Print ISBN:
9780195173116
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America

David Paul Nord
David Paul Nord

Professor of Journalism and Adjunct Professor of History and American Studies

Indiana University
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Published online:
14 July 2005
Published in print:
2 September 2004
Online ISBN:
9780199835683
Print ISBN:
9780195173116
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

In the years after 1815, a few visionary entrepreneurs decided the time was right to launch true mass media in America. They believed it was possible through new technology, national organization, and the grace of God to place the same printed message into the hands of every man, woman, and child in America. Though these entrepreneurs were savvy businessmen, their publishing enterprises were not commercial businesses. They were nonprofit religious organizations, including the American Bible Society, American Tract Society, and American Sunday School Union. Faith in Reading tells the story of the noncommercial origins of mass media in America. The theme is how religious publishers learned to work against the flow of ordinary commerce. Religious publishing societies believed that reading was too important to be left to the “market revolution”; they sought to foil the market through the “visible hand” of organization. Though religious publishers worked against the market, they employed modern printing technologies and business methods, and were remarkably successful, churning out millions of Bibles, tracts, religious books, and periodicals. At the same time, they tried to teach people to read those books in the most traditional way. Their aim was to use new mass media to encourage old reading habits. This book examines both publishers and readers. It is about how religious publishing societies imagined their readers. It is also about reader response — how ordinary readers received and read religious books and tracts in early 19th century America.

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