Mara Einstein has worked as an executive at NBC, MTV Networks, and at major advertising agencies. She is Professor of Media Studies at Queens College, CUNY, USA and Director of the Masters program in Media and Social Justice.

Katherine Madden teaches media studies at Jesuit High School in Sacramento, California, USA.

Diane Winston holds the Knight Chair in Media and Religion at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, USA.

Introduction

Part I: Maintenance of the self

1. Flaunting Christian patriarchy in the 21st century: Todd Chrisley's straight guy with the queer eye

Diane Winston

2. Making over body and soul: gender, selfhood, and parables of spiritual neoliberalism on Makeover TV

Brenda R. Weber

3. Black female sexual agency and racialized holy sex in black Christian reality TV shows

Monique Moultrie

Part II: The performance of authenticity

4. "This is just an incredible God thing": monetized domesticity in bottom-up media

Katherine Madden

5. "The renovation starts now!": rite-of-passage reality television

Erica Hurwitz Andrus

6. When the most popular format reaches the most atypical country: reality TV and religion in Israel

Yoel Cohen and Amir Hetsroni

7. All-American cancellation: spectacle and neoliberal performativity in All-American Muslim

Melinda Q. Brennan

Part III: Niche markets

8. Sister Wives: the Protestantization of Mormon polygamy

Myev Rees

9. Paranormal reality television: audience engagement with mediums and spirit communication

Annette Hill

10. Conjuring spirits in a neoliberal era: ghost reality television, Third Wave spiritual warfare, and haunting pasts

Sean McCloud

11. Amish reality and reality TV "Amishness": agonism in the cultural marketplace

Stewart M. Hoover

Part IV: Commodification of the sacred

12. Praying for reality: the invisible hand in Downey and Burnett's Answered Prayers

Sharon Lauricella

13. "The search for a young Imam begins now": Imam Muda and civilizational Islam in Malaysia

Andrea Stanton

14. Preachers of Oxygen: franchising faith on reality TV

Mara Einstein