A revelatory critique of public display in the United States.
 
In Religion in Plain View, Sally M. Promey analyzes religion’s visible saturation of American public space and the histories that shaped this exhibitionary aesthetics. In street art, vehicle décor, signs, monuments, architecture, zoning policy, and more, Promey exposes American display’s merger of evangelicalism, capitalism, and imperialism. From this convergence, display materializes a distinctly American drive to advertise, claim territory, invalidate competitors, and fabricate a tractable national heritage. Charting this aesthetics’ strategic work as a Protestant technology of White nation formation, Religion in Plain View offers a dynamic critique of the ways public display perpetuates deeply ingrained assumptions about the proper shape of life and land in the United States.

"An ambitious exploration of the public nature of religion in America. Locating an overlap between Christianity and capitalism . . . Promey’s study of the ways in which power is mediated via material culture fascinates." - Publishers Weekly

"An important work for students of sociology of place and religion." - Library Journal