Religious Communication Association Book of the Year Award 2013

President’s Author Series Award, Indiana Wesleyan University 2013

 

“A truly rich and rewarding work.” —Paul C. Gutjahr, Journal of Presbyterian History

 

“This is one of the most important and substantial film books of 2012 . . . . A cogent and compelling story.” —T. Lindvall, Choice

 

“William Romanowski is fair-minded, has a fascinating story to tell, and tells it well.” —Tom Aitken, Times Literary Supplement

 

“It’s a fascinating history, meticulously researched . . . Some of the players are as colourful as the movies themselves.” —Church Times

 

“Thoroughly researched . . . readers will appreciate and learn much from the fresh perspective on the relation of religious Americans to the movies that Reforming Hollywood offers.” —Judith Weisenfeld, Church History

 

“This is one of those important books which may change the discourse in a discipline. It is erudite, inspiring, meticulously researched, and published by the world’s most prestigious academic publishing house; it sets out, explicitly, to retell the standard history of its field.” —Byron Borger, Comment

 

“Pop culture expert Romanowski (Eyes Wide Open) offers a subtle and surprising thesis: far from being censorious, American Protestants have for a century had a formative, complex, often cooperative relationship with the Hollywood film industry through a variety of commission, councils, and representatives seeking to use film to promote and improve the nation's moral health. The book brims with historical evidence-gathered from interviews and periodicals and painstakingly footnoted-that proves and provides nuance to Romanowski's argument . . . Especially fascinating is the illumination of the cultural and political forces that developed culture wars in the entertainment arena.” —Publishers Weekly

 

“Deeply researched... fills an important gap in the history of American cinema and adds to the understanding of religion in movies.” —Anthony Burke Smith, American Historical Review

 

“Reforming Hollywood is an important reminder of the role that affiliated Protestants played in the ongoing struggle against film censorship in the first half of the twentieth century.” —Nancy J. Rosenbloom, Journal of American History

 

“Reforming Hollywood is richly researched and painstakingly footnoted...It is clearly and compellingly written and certainly of interest to students and academics looking to enrich their understanding of film censorship.” —Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies

 

“A detailed, thoughtful, and thoroughly engaging account of the impact of Protestant religious machinery on the development of the studio system . . . . an important, timely study.” —Bruce Isaacs, Literature & Aesthetics

 

“An outstanding historical work...[a] well-researched treatment . . . The gift of Romanowski’s excellent treatment of the history of Protestant engagement with film is in recognizing the shortcomings of the contemporary evangelical approach to film criticism, and in providing enough history for us to find a better way forward while keeping us from falling into past traps.” —Patheos

 

“Romanowski recounts the work of Hollywood’s Protestant reformers with an astonishing level of detail and clarity...Reforming Hollywood should become the standard secondary source for anyone interested in the role Protestants have played in the history of Hollywood—and in understanding how their work has helped shape, for better and worse, the cinema we have today.” —Patton Dodd, Books & Culture

 

“To attempt to summarize all of the questions and issues that Romanowski’s book raises would do disservice to his text. Reforming Hollywood is an important resource for scholars of American cultural, religious, and intellectual history, as well as media theory, but it also is an important read for Protestants—especially evangelicals—who tend to assume that our recent attempts at a more sophisticated, fully-rounded view of filmmaking and analysis are a new development.” —Alissa Wilkinson, Christianity Today

 

“...thoroughly researched, astonishingly succinct study . . . serious students of the media and religion will savor its rich detail.” —Ray Olson, Booklist

 

“For those with an interest in popular culture and its relationship with Christianity, in this instance American Protestantism, Romanowski's book is illuminating.” —Eleanor Jackson, Theology

 

“This well-researched and detailed study adds to the scholarly literature about Hollywood during the twentieth century by accounting for the Protestant role in how the major studios decided what constituted acceptable entertainment. . . . Reforming Hollywood will add to other recent studies also underscoring the extent to which consumerism, suburbia, and middle class values have been central to the rise of evangelicalism in recent decades.” —Tyler Flynn, Fides et Historia

 

“...for those wanting to think more deeply about how artistic freedom, profit margins, and Protestant concern for public welfare have related to one another, the groundbreaking Reforming Hollywood will be just the ticket.” —Barry Cooper, The Gospel Coalition

 

“William D. Romanowski gives us a meticulously-researched, highly readable account that illuminates the history of American religion in the twentieth century . . . [Reforming Hollywood] is a fluent, thorough history from which any student of film or American religious history--and anyone who loves the movies--will learn a lot.” —ImageUpdate

 

“Romanowski’s book leaves little doubt that mainline Protestants were principled liberals when it came to defending free speech, not because of but in spite of lingering anti-Catholicism (and anti-Semitism) within their ranks . . . . One of the virtues of Romanowski’s book is that it shows quite clearly that Protestants in the mainline churches and in the National Council of Churches truly evolved into pluralists, accepting the decentering of their role as moral custodians and embracing an ecumenical and liberal understanding of their society. But that embrace did not mean that they believed that the advancement of justice and the general welfare had ceased to require the vigorous promotion of Christian, or more generally religious, values. And so, when it came to Hollywood, Protestants continually worked to moralize the movies.” —Frances G. Couvares, Modern Intellectual History