Consider this the next time you watch a commercial on TV

“It is the intent of this study to tell … how ordinary folk came to distrust leaders of genius and talent and to defend the right of common people to shape their own faith and submit to leaders of their own choosing. This story also provides new insight into how America became a liberal, competitive, and market-driven society … In this way, religious movements eager to preserve the supernatural in everyday life had the ironic effect of accelerating the break-up of tradition society and the advent of a social order of competition, self-expression, and free enterprise. In this moment of democratic aspirations, religious leaders could not foresee that their assault upon mediating structures could produce society in which grasping entrepreneurs could erect new forms of tyranny in religious, political, and economic institutions.”