Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production

by David Morgan

In this lavishly illustrated book, David Morgan surveys the visual culture that shaped American Protestantism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--a vast record of images in illustrated bibles, Christian almanacs, children's literature, popular religious books, charts, broadsides, Sunday school cards, illuminated devotional items, tracts, chromos, and engravings. His purpose is to explain the rise of these images, their appearance and subject matter, how they were understood by believers, the uses to which they were put, and what their relation was to technological innovations, commerce, and the cultural politics of Protestantism. His overarching argument is that the role of images in American Protestantism greatly expanded and developed during this period.

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

David Morgan is Professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, with an additional appointment in Duke's Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies. Morgan served as the Chair in the Department of Religious Studies in Trinity College of Duke University from 2013-2016