A perfect Tuesday morning: a cup of coffee, Star Wars sampling, abstinence training, and white Christian rap. The "Christian Side Hug" has taken off and the group, Encounter Generation, looks oddly enough like The Basement (I have a forthcoming piece in Alabama Heritage's next issue on the 5000-member Birmingham youth group run by Matt Pitt). Aesthetically, that is. The "CSH" may launch the Encounter into mega-status or mega-scandal but either way it's wonderful entertainment. Enjoy:
Tampilkan postingan dengan label megachurches. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label megachurches. Tampilkan semua postingan
Selasa, 05 April 2011
Sabtu, 06 November 2010
Big Church
Randall Stephens
Big, bigger, biggest. Americans dig superlatives. I didn't know that as a kid when the Stephens clan attended the enormous College Church of the Nazarene in Olathe, Kansas. It was and still is one of the defining features of my home town. It looks a little like a massive
brick wigwam, or an enormous brick-covered circus tent, or bricked mother ship, with docking stations, resting on the prairie. (When the main sanctuary was built around 1980 I don't think "megachurch" had yet entered the neologism lexicon.)
As a youngster, maybe I assumed that most other people, too, attended churches with 2,000-plus members. Our church had stadium seating and a passion play that brought acres of Jerusalem--hills, shrubbery, buildings, a tomb, the Last Supper tablescape--into our sanctuary. I did visit some Missouri Wesleyan and Nazarene churches out in the sticks that didn't have orchestras, so I suppose I did soon realize that not everyone was blessed with a sprawling church complex.
You could get lost in the basement halls of our church. (I still remember all the smells of that basement when we had to scurry down there in the late 1970s during a tornado. Odors of Play Doh mingling with mold, perfume, and Old Spice.)
I wonder what future generations of historians will have to say about the megachurch. (Surely, sociologists and suburban anthropologists have plenty to say about it now. So did Andrew Sullivan in his Conscience of a Conservative.) What does the megachurch tell us about religion in America in the last 20 years or so? What does the disdain that most critics have for them tell us? If we took a snapshot of American evangelicalism in the 1880s or the 1950s and compared that with the megachurch
context of today, what contrasts would come into focus? (Matt Sutton found some roots of the phenomenon in Sister Aimee and Angelus Temple.)
An excerpt of an AJC piece on the ever-present megachurch:
Shelia M. Poole, "Megachurches: Supersizing Faith," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 6, 2010.
Rock climbing walls, kids' spaces that resemble small Disneylands, bookstores, state-of-the-art sound systems. It's church -- supersized. In metro Atlanta and elsewhere, the number of megachurches, which have long been defined as having a weekly attendance of 2,000 or more, are still drawing huge numbers of worshippers and receiving millions of dollars in the collection plate. "Megachurches have really succeeded because they service all needs of the community, the spiritual and the social," said Lerone A. Martin, an assistant professor of American religious history at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. . . .
These religious behemoths have received greater attention of late after a flurry of well-publicized litigation against one of the most mega of megachurches, the 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia. New Birth is named as a defendant in five lawsuits, four of which allege that its prominent pastor, Bishop Eddie L. Long, coerced four young men into having sex.>>>
Big, bigger, biggest. Americans dig superlatives. I didn't know that as a kid when the Stephens clan attended the enormous College Church of the Nazarene in Olathe, Kansas. It was and still is one of the defining features of my home town. It looks a little like a massive
brick wigwam, or an enormous brick-covered circus tent, or bricked mother ship, with docking stations, resting on the prairie. (When the main sanctuary was built around 1980 I don't think "megachurch" had yet entered the neologism lexicon.)As a youngster, maybe I assumed that most other people, too, attended churches with 2,000-plus members. Our church had stadium seating and a passion play that brought acres of Jerusalem--hills, shrubbery, buildings, a tomb, the Last Supper tablescape--into our sanctuary. I did visit some Missouri Wesleyan and Nazarene churches out in the sticks that didn't have orchestras, so I suppose I did soon realize that not everyone was blessed with a sprawling church complex.
You could get lost in the basement halls of our church. (I still remember all the smells of that basement when we had to scurry down there in the late 1970s during a tornado. Odors of Play Doh mingling with mold, perfume, and Old Spice.)
I wonder what future generations of historians will have to say about the megachurch. (Surely, sociologists and suburban anthropologists have plenty to say about it now. So did Andrew Sullivan in his Conscience of a Conservative.) What does the megachurch tell us about religion in America in the last 20 years or so? What does the disdain that most critics have for them tell us? If we took a snapshot of American evangelicalism in the 1880s or the 1950s and compared that with the megachurch
context of today, what contrasts would come into focus? (Matt Sutton found some roots of the phenomenon in Sister Aimee and Angelus Temple.)An excerpt of an AJC piece on the ever-present megachurch:
Shelia M. Poole, "Megachurches: Supersizing Faith," Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 6, 2010.
Rock climbing walls, kids' spaces that resemble small Disneylands, bookstores, state-of-the-art sound systems. It's church -- supersized. In metro Atlanta and elsewhere, the number of megachurches, which have long been defined as having a weekly attendance of 2,000 or more, are still drawing huge numbers of worshippers and receiving millions of dollars in the collection plate. "Megachurches have really succeeded because they service all needs of the community, the spiritual and the social," said Lerone A. Martin, an assistant professor of American religious history at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis. . . .
These religious behemoths have received greater attention of late after a flurry of well-publicized litigation against one of the most mega of megachurches, the 25,000-member New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia. New Birth is named as a defendant in five lawsuits, four of which allege that its prominent pastor, Bishop Eddie L. Long, coerced four young men into having sex.>>>
Minggu, 17 Agustus 2008
Obama, McCain, and the Faith Forum
Darren GremIn case you missed the "Faith and Politics Forum" at Saddleback Church last night, here's a site with all the transcripts. YouTube videos are available as well, starting here.
If you did catch it, either in part or in whole, I'd certainly like to open the floor for debate on the relative value of this forum, the opinions presented by the candidates, the political/religious impact of the forum, the rhetorical strategies employed, etc. Personally, I'm not sure the forum offered much in the way of serious engagement by either candidate with faith and politics, mostly because Rick Warren's brand of evangelicalism loaded the questions. But it certainly made for interesting viewing nonetheless.
Sabtu, 26 Januari 2008
Poor Richard and God's Profits
PAUL HARVEY
Sarah Posner, author of God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, follows the machinations of the "Word of Faith" theologians -- James Hagee, Kenneth Copeland, et al. -- whose over-the-top fundraising techniques and other questionable practices have drawn scrutiny from Congress. An excerpt from the book can be found here (showing that "Word of Faith preachers often give lip service to their church's community service projects yet worship at the altar of hyperindividualism and unregulated capitalism" -- sound familiar?).
Unlike Ted Haggard, gay sex scandals from some insiders have not been able to bring these guys down. Why? Health and wealth theology is just too deeply interwwined with the American religious fabric. Every evangelical generation throws its heroes up the pop charts.
Unlike Ted Haggard, gay sex scandals from some insiders have not been able to bring these guys down. Why? Health and wealth theology is just too deeply interwwined with the American religious fabric. Every evangelical generation throws its heroes up the pop charts.
While listening to Posner being interviewed on the radio, I was, conveniently for thinking about blog entries, reading Jill Lepore's latest essay in the New Yorker: "The Creed: What Poor Richard cost Benjamin Franklin." Franklin's irrepressibly punning and scatological humor fed right into the health and wealth gospel of future generations. Americans missed the joke and took the moral. Lepore writes:
Franklin finished his little essay ["The Way to Wealth"} at sea, on July 7, 1757. When he reached England, he sent it back on the first westbound vessel. It was published as the Preface to “Poor Richard Improved, 1758,” although it was soon reprinted, in at least a hundred and forty-five editions and six languages even before the eighteenth century was over, usually with the title “The Way to Wealth.” “It long ago passed from literature into the general human speech,” Carl Van Doren wrote in 1938, in an extraordinarily elegant biography of Franklin. This year marks the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of “The Way to Wealth,” among the most famous pieces of American writing ever, and one of the most willfully misunderstood. A lay sermon about how industry begets riches (No Gains, without Pains), “The Way to Wealth” has been taken for Benjamin Franklin’s—and even America’s—creed, and there’s a line or two of truth in that, but not a whole page. “The Way to Wealth” is also a parody, stitched and bound between the covers of a sham.
How's this for a TBN Special: A Frankin re-enactor delivering Franklin's iconic, and ironic, morals to an audience just divested of wallets.
He could start with: Serving God is Doing good to Man, but Praying is thought an easier Service, and therefore more generally chosen.
Or: He that lives upon Hope, dies farting (or "fasting," depending on whether you think it was a printer's error -- either one will do).
Sabtu, 01 Desember 2007
Megachurches, MegaEconomics
BY DARREN GREMGood ol' Max Weber posited long ago that faith was good for the economy. No doubt he wouldn't be surprised by the findings of a recent NYT article on the economic ripples created by megachurches (Note: registration may be required).
As this article reports, megachurch pastors regularly see themselves as engaged in "meeting their community's economic needs,” ranging from steady work for contractors to financial counseling for families to loans for local entrepreneurs. The local Chamber of Commerce usually cheers on, but the local tax office is routinely stuck between a rock and hard place, unable to take in taxes from the megachurch itself while still having to tax its competitors (for instance, a nearby "secular" sports complex). This has important consequences for businesses and service providers outside the megachurch’s economic web, something that pastors and church leaders decry as unintended. ("We don't want to be taking bread off of people's tables," remarks one pastor). It also enables a strange brew of (de)secularization, as megachurches boost certain economic zones, all the while making inroads into areas of need typically met by private enterprise, the state, or, as Nancy Eiesland has shown, other religious groups.
All in all, this a timely piece of journalism that offers a perspective on megachurches rarely considered. In addition, it features a great map of megachurches nationwide, taken from Scott Thumma's work. Definitely a handy resource for any classroom PowerPoint.
As this article reports, megachurch pastors regularly see themselves as engaged in "meeting their community's economic needs,” ranging from steady work for contractors to financial counseling for families to loans for local entrepreneurs. The local Chamber of Commerce usually cheers on, but the local tax office is routinely stuck between a rock and hard place, unable to take in taxes from the megachurch itself while still having to tax its competitors (for instance, a nearby "secular" sports complex). This has important consequences for businesses and service providers outside the megachurch’s economic web, something that pastors and church leaders decry as unintended. ("We don't want to be taking bread off of people's tables," remarks one pastor). It also enables a strange brew of (de)secularization, as megachurches boost certain economic zones, all the while making inroads into areas of need typically met by private enterprise, the state, or, as Nancy Eiesland has shown, other religious groups.
All in all, this a timely piece of journalism that offers a perspective on megachurches rarely considered. In addition, it features a great map of megachurches nationwide, taken from Scott Thumma's work. Definitely a handy resource for any classroom PowerPoint.
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)