Evangelical US megachurches are market-driven

Evangelical US megachurches like Saddleback are market-driven, with transcendence not on the menu

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/22/popular-evangelical-c...

"Megachurches are market-driven. They study demographic data and plan marketing schemes tailored to their local target audiences."

"This is the future of middle-class US Christianity.... If the trend identified in the Aris study continues, we will see a country divided between conservative evangelical Christians and secular liberals – the latter hostile to religious belief, identified with evangelical Christianity. This is bad news because popular evangelical Christianity is religiously vacuous. It is directed to secular ends which, arguably, should be promoted by secular means. Saddleback is religion for people who don't like religion: transcendence is not on the menu."

"Saddleback... seemed the butt end of Christianity: stripped of history and icon­ography, wholly immersed in its secular surroundings, constructed according to a business model and promoted by motivational speakers – bland, cheerful, dull."

OK, I can see that mega-churches may not be to everyone's taste, but are 'museum' churches any better? I really do not follow the reasoning of the article, exactly how is a community based mega-church vacuous? Because they try to meet the needs of their members? Really?

Saddleback is religion for people who don't like religion
The writer might be right on this point. To the members of Saddleback church they don't have a religion, they lead a christian lifestyle. Churches should be more than places of quiet reflection or 'navel gazing'.

Yeah, it's hard to understand something you hate so immediately and viscerally. I basically agree with the author, but I recognize it's a question of taste. Megachurches reflect the culture around them, sure. To my mind anyway they seem middle-class, suburban, rootless and tacky—but also optimistic, unbounded, open-minded and very much alive. And that's assuming I understand them, which I freely concede is only possible.

Anyway, take a gorgeous old-fashioned church in, say, rural Greece—the sort of place the author would no doubt prefer. Fun to visit, but I think, if you really understood the culture around it most of us would feel equally alienated by its culture--close-minded, nosy, nationalistic and out of touch with modern life. We're kidding ourselves if we think a first-century Christian community wouldn't weird us out even more. Those creeps smelled like shit and garlic, treated women like crap, beat slaves, kept animals in the house and lusted after rotten-fish sauce! Worst of all, they met in nasty little houses, ignoring all those numinous, picturesque temples.

>3 timspalding: And megachurch christians AREN'T close-minded, nosy, nationalistic, and out of touch with modern life? Seems to me the two share quite a bit.

Well, if you think Christian belief and morals are inherently out of touch, that's fine--we're not going to solve that one together. But look, my local Catholic church has no parking, no wheelchair access, does nothing in new media, has few social events to speak of, is decorated in cheap, forty-year old kitsch, positively repels anyone between 10 and 40, is based around a community (Polish people) that has deserted the neighborhood, and has little connection to the current (affluent, non-Polish) neighborhood. I love it, but I think most megachurches are living in the modern, real world in a way my church isn't. To a large extent that isn't a world I like—especially suburban living—but there you have it.

I don't think they're out of touch. I think the Conservative Fundamentalist UNDERSTANDING of them is out of touch

>5 timspalding: Tim, I know a lot of Catholic and Anglican churches in deprived inner-city areas which run soup kitchens, open their basements and crypts to homeless people and down-and-outs, run youth clubs for disadvantaged youth, assist immigrants, asylum seekers and people from minority communities, run schools where Christian pupils are in a tiny minority, etc, etc. I suppose they're in touch with a different part of the modern, real world.

John, to me those are the true Christians. People who spread hate and close-minded bigotry neither understand nor follow the teachings of the Christ.

Admittedly, not all Fundamentalists are those things (Osteen's church certainly isn't). However, I wonder whether Osteen really teaches Christianity, or Self-Help that just happens to use Christian language? Jesus was no egotist, the man seemed more interested in encouraging service to others than improving one's own monetary or social position, which is what Osteen seems to be all about. Not only that, but according to Osteen, this is what GOD wants us to do. I don't know about you, but thats not really a god I feel much like worshipping or loving. Seems like faith should encourage us to better ourselves, to reach toward something higher, not indulge in selfishness and egotism.

I suppose they're in touch with a different part of the modern, real world.

I think that's very true, and a good corrective to what I was saying. Catholic churches, for both historical, demographic and organizational reasons, are strong and effective touch with segments of American society that a suburban evangelical church usually is not.

Your point about schools is also good. Catholics have generally been much more comfortable providing charitable services without trying to convert people. This is a traditional position, but I think it comes off as rather modern today.(1)

Overall, though, I think Catholics are in a sort of "crouch" compared to evangelicals. They have a lot less influence than their numbers would suggest, and their power is more often conservative than progressive ("no" not "yes," without political connotation), and their membership is less committed and culture less vibrart and assertive.

Take the mere numbers: "evangelical" is a very wiggly term, but a standard measurement puts US evangelical Protestants and Catholics at 28.6% and 24.5% respectively. All things being equal they ought to have the same cultural weight. I don't think anyone would say they do. Since this is a book site, you can start with the bestsellers list.

(1) Is anyone familiar with Doable Evangelism? There was a good This American Life on the guy who promotes the concept. Although the Catholic Church has, of course, evangelized all over the world, I think evangelicals are only now—controversially—starting to realize that focusing on connecting with people is more important than trying to convert them.

I really know very little, OK nothing, about the mega churches or about Olsteen or Warren's theology or message. I have a book somewhere by Rick Warren, but have not read it.

It sure seems to me that they intend to give a Christian message. Is there something unChristian about their message, other than the addition of self help instruction and well targeted marketing efforts.

Our bishop visited our parish this past month and for some reason mega churches came up in the discussion. The bishop mentioned that there is a different target audience between the Episcopal Church and the mega churches and a different marketing approach. He was probably talking along the same lines as Tim and John.

Providing for the needs of the congregation seems to be a good thing.

"Religiously vacuous" seems to be a harsh critique. The comment about being stripped of history, might be applied as well to many in my denomination. And any sense of a spirituality from iconography equally applicable.

Some more thoughts, adapting somewhat from comments I left for John:

I think culture is hard. When we examine a foreign culture--whether it's a foreign country, the past, or a culture within our country--it's hard to avoid "looking for yourself" in it. What we like about such a culture is, often as not, really what we like about our own, or what we hate. Understanding another culture on its own terms is a lifelong project and, I think, closely linked with the practice of Christian empathy.

I suspect if you presented the church-goers with the articles' descriptions, they'd feel they weren't merely being reviled, but profoundly misunderstood too.

If Catholics and Anglicans poke their noses into evangelical churches, expecting to find "transcendence" in customary places, I suspect they'll come away disappointed. But I suspect that says more about them than it does about evangelicals.

To take a positive example, I think Evangelical Protestantism is more musical, and the musical experience is more corporate, on average, than Catholic churches. US Catholic churches tend to have terrible music, and the parishioners often act like they're engaged in a labor-action against it--they'll show up and stand around glumly, but they're damned if they're going to participate in the thing! Growing up a WASP with a music teacher mother, and passing through mixed mainline/evangelical Christianity, singing is central to my religious experience. There's nothing like being in a crowded church full of people singing a hymn with all their heart—and I'd say that something is "transcendent."

Back from a couple of days without internet access, facilitating a workshop on elections hosted by an Anglican bishop in a fairly inaccessible part of southern Sudan...

>13 timspalding: - Tim, I'm glad you mention culture, as I think it is often underestimated when looking at religious affiliation. Some of the more adversarial threads in Pro and Con (Religion), and some of our co-religionists on LT, appear to assume that assent to a set of intellectual beliefs is (or should be) the prime reason for belonging to a faith community. To me community, culture, tradition, family, belonging and more are all part of church, and I think that would be true of many Catholics and Anglicans (and people of other faiths). Of course if one really disagreed with a substantial part of the official doctrine, one might move out, but for many the doctrine is not necessarily the prime mover. The same might be true of some of these mega-churches.

As a Catholic I agree fully with you about how poor our music generally is, at least in English-speaking Catholic churches. I've been a choir master and choir member from time to time and it's a real struggle to introduce anything new and interesting and an even bigger struggle to get people in the congregation to sing. Liturgical music is normally supposed to be an exercise in participation by the congregation rather than a performance by a choir, but that's usually not the reality. Music is one of the things I love about Anglican worship.

African Catholicism is far more vibrant musically, and I wonder whether your Hispanic parishes might be similar? Mind you, in pre-Vatican II days the whole congregation used to belt out some of the old favourites like "Faith of our Fathers" and "Hail glorious St Patrick", and the singing at Christmas Midnight Mass after half the congregation had staggered over from the King George V (pub) or the parish club was always spectacular. The Missa de Angelis was surely never meant to be sung like a rugby song - or who knows, maybe it was? "Credo in unum Deum" with everybody in the pew swaying in unison...

edited for typo

The pope has recently urged the Catholic Church "to exploit the appropriate opportunities, languages and means necessary to enter into dialogue with modern cultures".

Church must provide answers to Society's Questions, says Pope

Dialogue with the modern world is of course a core part of Catholic teaching - see Gaudium et Spes.

There's something a little weird about the idea of the Church entering into dialogue "with the modern world."

Is Catholicism a fixed point in time, which must regard all others, including the present, as a foreign thing? Sure, you're "talking to it," but you're still making it something separate from you.

Take it back. The Medieval Church opposed many aspects of contemporary European culture. It spent centuries trying to get brutish, proud and uncultured Germans to stop hacking at each other and show some order, restraint and piety. But would anyone say that the Church was in "dialogue with the Medieval world"?

"The Medieval Church . . . . trying to get brutish, proud and uncultured Germans to stop hacking at eac other and show some order, restraint and
piety . . ."

Yes, I think the Church did have some influence in those directions, especially toward "piety."
By late Medieval times, since the time that Virgil had made piety the most admirable quality of his hero Aeneas, "pietas", so lofty a concept in Augustan Rome, had begun to slide toward its modern degeneration, where, if you hear "pious..." you almost expect "hypocrite" to be the next word.

But, as a technical term in History of Religion,
piety denotes the qualities in Pietism, an admirable movement which produced Luther and some of the most notable Reformation
religionists and thinkers. And that happened elsewhere too, but above all in Germany.

Congregations Gone Wild (New York Times)

The trend toward consumer-driven religion...