Join us for the launch of Gods of the Smoke Machine: Power, Pain, and the Rise of Christian Nationalism in the Megachurch by Scott Latta, who will be in conversation with author and essayist Elena Passarello.
About Gods of the Smoke Machine
We are entering a new era of religion in America: For the first time, fewer than half the country belongs to a church. Within that group, growing numbers are consolidating in megachurches, which are amassing social and political power in our age of convenience and easy celebrity.
Megachurch pastors have never been more influential--with media empires, networks, and entire colleges under their control. But their churches have also never been more prone to abuse and hurt. Gods of the Smoke Machine goes inside America's largest churches to uncover the hidden stories of trauma happening within our most powerful Christian institutions and meet the survivors, attorneys, and advocates fighting for accountability. It is a cloaked world of sex, power, politics, and money, but also a human story of pain, betrayal, and resilience.
Combining personal storytelling and original reporting, author Scott Latta pulls back the curtain on a dangerously insular institution of more than seventeen hundred churches nationwide that is answerable to almost no outside accountability.
Even those who have never set foot in a church can feel the implications of this societal shift. Megachurch pastors were the kingmakers of Donald Trump and drove the rhetoric behind the January 6 attack on the US Capitol. For decades, they have crafted their own laws even as they fought to influence ours.
Scott Latta is an award-winning journalist who has spent a decade reporting for humanitarian organizations on conflict, displacement, and climate change around the world. His essays and reporting have been featured in The Believer, CityLab, Modern Farmer, and The Southampton Review, which awarded him the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize
Elena Passarello is the author of two award-winning nonfiction collections: Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses. She appears weekly on the PRX radio program Live Wire, and hosts the podcast Open Book, where authors discuss their reading habits. Elena is on faculty at the Oregon State University MFA program