“Cookies to serve God’s glory”: the St Roger Abbey organic French patisserie as a religious and secular site

ABSTRACT

This article examines a small French patisserie in the Chicago suburbs, St Roger Abbey, operated by the Fraternité Notre Dame, a Marian devotional movement. Using visual analysis of the physical space and product packaging, and textual analysis of their marketing material, I argue that the patisserie’s proprietors deploy religious symbols and concepts to invoke, both explicitly and implicitly, authenticity and value, drawing from a reservoir of cultural nostalgia and exoticism. St Roger Abbey markets itself as offering the spiritual authenticity of the premodern, allowing individuals figuratively and literally to consume these markers of nostalgia and authenticity and, in doing so, reinforce their constructed identities within the sanctioned bounds of contemporary neoliberal capitalism. The case of St Roger Abbey challenges social models that emphasize a secular/religious divide.

KEYWORDS:

• Authenticity
• commerce
• business
• nostalgia
• food
• visual analysis
• postsecularism

Acknowledgments

A previous version of this article was presented in 2018 in a research seminar at the University of Turku and Åbo Akademi in Turku, Finland. I appreciate feedback from Marcus Moberg, Terhi Utriainen, Peter Nynäs, Ruth Illman, and others present at that seminar. Stephen Bullivant also provided helpful feedback, as did the anonymous reviewers of the Journal of Contemporary Religion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The group uses “St Roger Abbey” as its official registered trademark, although occasionally employs “St. Roger Abbey” and even more occasionally “Saint Roger Abbey”. I use their official name throughout.

2 Research for this article was completed at the Hawthorn Mall location, although the new location in the town square (cf. high street) in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette is nearly identical, as are the products.

3 I am unsure why the group vacillates between ‘St’, ‘St.’, and ‘Saint’, but have reproduced these as used in the store.

Additional information

Funding

No external funding source was reported by the author.

Notes on contributors

Benjamin E. Zeller

Benjamin E. Zeller is Professor and Chair of Religion at Lake Forest College in Chicago, USA. He is the author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion (2014) and Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late Twentieth-Century America (2010), editor of the Handbook of UFO Religions (2021), and co-editor of Religion, Attire, and Adornment in North America (2023), Religion, Food, and Eating in North America (2014), and The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (2014). He is also co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. CORRESPONDENCE: Lake Forest College, 555 N. Sheridan Road, Lake Forest, IL 60045, USA.