Stations of the Cross

Adorno and Christian Right Radio

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by Paul Apostolidis

Duke University Press

Due/Published July 2000, 288 pages, paper

ISBN 0822325411

Since the 1970s, American society has provided especially fertile ground for the growth of the Christian right and its influence on both political and cultural discourse. Apostolidis shows how a critical component of this movement's popular culture--evangelical conservative radio--interacts with the current U.S. political economy. By examining in particular James Dobson;s influential program, Focus on the Family--its messages, politics, and effects--Apostolidis reveals the complex nature of contemporary conservative religious culture.

Public ideology and institutional tendencies clash, the author argues, in the restructuring of the welfare state, the financing of the electoral system, and the backlash against women and minorities. These frictions are nowhere more apparent than on Christian right radio. Reinvigorating the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School, Apostolidis shows how ideas derived from early critical theory--in particular that of Theodor W. Adorno--can illuminate the political and social dynamics of this aspect of contemporary American culture. He uses and reworks Adorno's theories to interpret the nationally broadcast Focus on the Family, revealing how the cultural discourse of the Christian right resonates with recent structural transformations in the American political economy. Apostolidis shows that the antidote to the Christian right's marriage of religious and market fundamentalism lies not in a reinvocation of liberal fundamentals, but rather depends on a patient cultivation of the affinities between religionÕs utopian impulses and radical, democratic challenges to the present political-economic order.  

"Paul Apostolidis's excellent study Stations of the Cross: Adorno and Christian Right Radio provides one of the sharpest analyses yet to appear of the Christian right and its media politics. The book is also an important contribution to critical theory, applying and reconstructing T. W. Adorno's approach to cultural criticism. Focusing on James DobsonÕs Focus on the Family, Apostolidis skillfully dissects the programÕs messages, politics, and effects, producing a first-rate study of contemporary conservative religious culture."--Douglas Kellner"Apostolidis's application of dialectical criticism to the evangelical radio program Focus on the Family is theoretically innovative and politically daring. Reading Christian conservatism as cultural critique, he discerns in its narrative structures the same utopian desire for ethical autonomy that animates 'left' criticisms of our post-Fordist social order. No apologist for the New Right but a democratic provocateur, Apostolidis challenges progressives to set aside their secular disdain for evangelicalism and consider how its powerful cultural idiom might provide intellectual and political radicalism with a new voice."--Lisa Disch, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities