Religion in the United States

2021: Church uses Big Data to attract new followers

At the end Big Data of December 2021, it became known that American churches began to resort to using tools to attract more parishioners. The company from USA Gloo is engaged in providing a service for analyzing personal data and actions of Americans on the Internet. This is to help churches find the people most likely to be open to their messages and join their communities across the country. More. here

2020: Ghanaian migrant religion

In January 2020, an article by anthropologist Jane Parish was published, which studies the impact of the US economy on the transformation of religious practices of migrants from Ghana.

Among the Akans - an ethnic group to which the inhabitants of Ghana also belong - faith in the divine spirit (sunsum) is widespread, which can appeal to the priest from leaves, stones, sticks, etc. In New York, priests began to hear calls from sumsum's "from watches, canes, a pair of jeans on a store shelf, candy wrappers or a bicycle tire."

What do people do, so surprisingly subtly feeling the world around them? Customers (and often children of illegal migrants, barely making ends meet themselves) come to the priests "for money for Balenciaga leather bags, Louis Vuitton $2000 garbage bag bags and Air Jordan 7 sneakers." For a small price, with God's help, they remove damage caused by witches, open a channel of luck, remove the crown of verseless, etseter.

However, progressive young priests suspect some deception in this whole system and do not accept the cult of consumption. "They say old gods ride in Lexus, BMW, Mercedes and Lamborghini cars and witches serve as their drivers."

These priests despise new European and Asian cars, but they have developed a whole cult around the old, discontinued American cars and the lost Ford production model. They preach some amazing magical socialism and resurrect the thirst for life in their clients, forcing them to associate themselves with "good" old wheelbarrows, breathing into the suffering "industrial spirit." You're single-minded like Pontiac Firebird with its powerful motor. You're as elusive as Chieftain with its fins. Your spine is like a Buick Skylark pendant.

1922

Mobile church based on "Ford" and priest driver. United States, 1922.