Abstract
Literature on megachurches (Protestant churches with attendance over 2000) concentrates on numbers at the expense of an associated, but more instructive, characteristic: an overriding commitment to growth. Churches of any size can adopt a growth-oriented theology, style and organisational structure. In such churches, the growth imperative is likely to apply not only to congregational membership but also to church buildings and collection receipts; to the television ministry and other forms of outreach; to the pastor’s book and CD sales; and to individual members’ businesses, incomes, houses and possessions. In each dimension of religious life, at both individual and corporate level, the gospel of growth demarcates a novel Christian form, attuned to the ethos of late capitalism.
A smiling teenager, whose casual dress, immaculate grooming and bubbly demeanour could have come straight out of a soft drink advertisement, greets you in the car park. ‘Is this your first time here? Welcome to the house of God! Have an awesome day!’ Security men, with black earpieces and uniform T-shirts, try to appear simultaneously friendly and inconspicuous. You hear the music well before you reach the auditorium; inside, the sound is a physical shock. More expertly styled figures bounce rhythmically or sway gently on the stage, one arm raised, eyes half-closed, while the band plays pop-rock very loudly and coloured lights swirl and strobe over the dancing audience. It’s ten on a Sunday morning and everyone is scrubbed clean and wholesome, but the ambience is a weird reworking of a night club or rock concert, minus the scents of sin, smoke and alcohol.
You’re in a megachurch, usually defined as a Protestant church with 2000 or more regular attenders (Thumma, 2001). The Hartford Institute for Religion Research identified 1343 megachurches in America in 2008 out of around 335,000 Christian congregations, and 35 US congregations in 2010 qualified as ‘gigachurches’ with memberships of over 10,000 (Stetzer, 2010).
Thumma and Travis identified four varieties of megachurch. The one just described would be in their ‘Seeker’ or ‘Charismatic/pastor-focused’ categories, which, between them, account for 55% of US megachurches. By contrast, those Thumma and Travis call ‘Old line/program-based’ are traditional church congregations with strong and visible denominational affiliations. Making up 30% of all US megachurches, such congregations may retain traditional hymns sung to an organ, announced by a minister wearing liturgical vestments, and all conveying an established theology (Thumma and Travis, 2007: 31–32). A fourth category, ‘New wave/Re-envisioned’, which in some other countries comes under the label of ‘emerging church’, also has US mega-exemplars (Thumma and Travis’s remaining 15%), which combine high-tech communication methods with ancient creeds, prayers and liturgical forms.
Usually regarded as an American phenomenon, megachurches are truly global. To take just a few examples, Rio de Janeiro’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God seats 12,000; the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations in Kiev claims 20,000 members; Australia’s largest, Hillsong, passed 20,000 in 2008; Singapore’s New Creation Church claims 22,000 and its City Harvest 23,000. America’s largest, Lakewood, in Houston, Texas, at 47,000, is dwarfed by the Redeemed Church of God in Lagos, which claims 500,000 at its monthly Holy Ghost services, and Seoul’s Yoido Full Gospel Church is estimated at 830,000 and growing. Five of the world’s 10 largest churches are in South Korea (Micklethwait and Wooldrige, 2009).
Outside the US, however, the term ‘megachurch’ refers exclusively to churches in Thumma and Travis’s Seeker and Charismatic/pastor-focused categories. The present analysis set out to understand these globalised megachurches as a distinctive religious movement. What do they represent socially and culturally? Where do they stand theologically? What drives them, and what really contributes to their distinctive identity and ethos? This study draws on primary sources as well as academic analyses, supplemented by observations between 2005 and 2011, principally in two Sydney megachurches, Brian Houston’s Hillsong and Phil Pringle’s Oxford Falls.
The churches in question could never be accused of hiding their light under a bushel, generating so much data globally that some discipline is required. This analysis utilises Ninian Smart’s seven-fold scheme, most fully elaborated in Dimensions of the Sacred (1996), of the ritual, doctrinal, experiential, mythic, ethical, social and material. Smart proposes his scheme as a comparative tool, enabling precise differentiation: for example, ‘The Episcopal church in Fiji may vary greatly from its counterpart in Scotland; Theravada Buddhism may differ markedly in Thailand and Burma’ (1996: 5).
For the global growth church movement, by contrast, church size and style trump nationality as a marker of distinctiveness. Several observers have argued that size, and the closely related characteristic of congregational culture, have surpassed denomination or theological tradition as the ‘most revealing and useful frame of reference for examining the differences among congregations in American Protestantism’ (Schaller, 2000: 25, 27). While the present analysis bears out Schaller’s observation about the close association between size and culture, the line of causation should not be assumed to be as Schaller supposed, with size the determining factor. On the contrary, it quickly became apparent over the course of the present study that studying ‘megachurches’ as an isolated phenomenon is misplaced, and a new label is required.
Growth churches in seven dimensions
The pattern that emerges most strikingly from applying Smart’s categories is the churches’ relentless emphasis on growth. As we shall see, a key feature of such churches, running through all the dimensions, is their unwaveringly forward-looking, growth-oriented vision, which must be already firmly in place while the church membership is still in miniscule, even double, figures. Limiting analysis to the period after such churches have become ‘mega’ severely restricts what can be learned from them. Instead, the term ‘growth churches’ captures their defining ethos, whatever their size or stage of development. These characteristics mark a style of church typical of late capitalism.
Ritual/practical dimension
Smart’s first dimension deals with spiritual practices such as worship, meditation, pilgrimage, sacrifice, sacramental rites and healing. At a growth church, two ritual moments stand out amid the apparently free-flowing (though actually highly scripted) service. The first is the offering, which occupies a substantial segment of the service. At Hillsong, a designated pastor (not the main preacher) mounts the stage specifically to lead the offering segment, which is likely to include a Bible reading and brief exposition about the virtues of giving and the promise of being financially blessed in return. Before the offering, buckets are passed, congregants’ attention is drawn to the two donation envelopes on their seats (one for the regular tithe, the other for special projects), both with a form attached for credit-card payment and both quoting Malachi 3:10: ‘Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, and … see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing.’ Worshippers are also reminded that the church foyer has an automatic teller machine.
The second point at which the scripted nature of growth church ritual becomes obvious is the altar call. This is the emotional climax when the pastor invites congregants to come forward and commit their lives. After a session of rock music, alternately stirring and meditative, and the main speaker’s message, ranging from humorous to motivational, the movement of converts to the front is carefully facilitated. At Hillsong, the entire congregation is asked to close their eyes, what Eiesland calls the ‘all-eyes-closed, all-heads-bowed traditional call’ (1977: 208). Reassured that no one can see, the congregants are invited to raise a hand if they wish to make a decision for Jesus (whether for the first time, or a recommitment). The pastor (whose eyes remain open) acknowledges the hands. Then everyone opens their eyes and those who had raised their hands are called to the front, where they are ushered out for separate prayer and counselling.
The call for converts (who only minutes earlier had been promised anonymity) to come forward is the most awkward-seeming moment in an otherwise non-threatening, ‘seeker-sensitive’ service. Its role therefore demands particular attention, revisited below in relation to Smart’s experiential dimension.
Doctrinal/philosophical dimension
Smart points out that the ritual and doctrinal dimensions are seldom independent (1996: 10). In growth churches, the ritual emphasis on giving money is symbiotic upon the doctrinal focus on prosperity and growth.
For individuals to give more, they need to increase their personal wealth, and so the institutional and theological aspects of the growth message prove mutually reinforcing. The tables of contents for books by Joel Osteen (‘New York Times Bestseller List # 1’), Warren (‘21 million copies sold’) or Creflo Dollar (‘God has a specific financial agenda that includes a financial transfer into the hands of Believers’) reveal a thesaurus-worth of synonyms for growth: expand, extend, enlarge, increase, multiply, impact, influence, abundance, advancement, fruitfulness, success, prosperity …
Many growth churches inherit from the Word of Faith Movement a developed theology of financial gain, often called the ‘prosperity gospel’. It argues that the ‘fullness of life’ described in the Bible (e.g. John 10:10) must mean not only spiritual but also material blessing. Prosperity teachers point to selected Bible passages, most importantly 2 Corinthians 8:9, ‘For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’.
The theology of growth gives importance to leadership and leadership depends on visioning. The four-decades-old literature of church growth paints expansion as both an end and a technique (e.g. Wagner, 1987: 42–51). As retold in the megachurch how-to literature, the key to success is to conceive a bold vision and pursue it unwaveringly. Published, according to the dust jacket, after three decades of ‘praying hard and risking big’, Hybels’s Courageous Leadership (2000) is based on ‘the power of vision’, which is ‘at the very core of leadership’. Hybels writes of ‘an energizing, God-honoring vision’; ‘a white-hot vision’; a ‘compelling’, ‘burning’, ‘exciting, stretching vision’, a ‘laser-like focus’, something to ‘ignite the church’.
Personal and church success go hand in hand, with individual wealth vital to both. Retired church growth professor C Peter Wagner argues that wealth is the key means – even surpassing ‘knowledge’ and ‘violence’ – for taking the world’s cities for God. To ‘make disciples of all nations’ (Matthew 28:19), it will be essential ‘to transfer the control of wealth. As long as those who are pleasing Satan [secular governments] remain in charge of the world economy, we can expect little progress’ (2008: 181–182). Only ‘vast amounts of wealth in the hands of righteous people’ will bring about the necessary transformation (2008: 19). So, ‘If you want to take a city, you need to buy it! Own businesses, property, and whatever other opportunities you can find to build wealth’ (2008: 184).
Just as the world is rich with ambiguous promise, so it also conceals intangible negatives. An unnamed ‘enemy’ threatens church expansion and individual Christians alike. Hillsong senior pastor Bobbie Houston’s vision of a Christian woman includes the expectation, not further elaborated, that: ‘She will deny the enemy his pleasure’ (Bobbie Houston, n.d.). Such themes, hinting at present or future confrontation with a cosmic adversary, are common in growth church literature, but elaboration of the ‘enemy’’s identity or purposes is seldom articulated. Growth churches’ oppositional imagery returns in relation to Smart’s ethical/legal dimension, below.
Mythic/narrative dimension
The study found historical accounts to be the sparsest dimension in growth church practice. Given growth churches’ forward-looking vision, the past is only to be left behind. Against an intense motivational focus on the future, human history becomes irrelevant. The online Senior Pastor’s biography for Cornerstone Church in Nashville declares: ‘Pastor Maury Davis was arrested at age eighteen for the crime of first-degree murder. Following his trial and conviction, he served eight and one-half years in the Texas Department of Corrections’ (http://www.cornerstonenashville.org/templates/_cornerstone/details.asp?id=38571&PID=441736, accessed 13 March 2011). To outsiders, a murder conviction might seem an unusual job recommendation; but growth church theology radically abandons the past. Once a person is ‘born again’, only the future counts.
Repudiation of the past applies also to the church’s life. Denominational heritage is left behind, as are periods of crisis. Pritchard (1996) explains how a damaging leadership conflict in Willow Creek’s early years was written out of the congregation’s shared memory. Membership turnover tends to be rapid: even long-established congregations maintain a demographic of predominantly teenagers and young adults (Thumma and Travis, 2007: 178). Growth churches’ emphasis on increase and on eager anticipation leaves the church’s own growth narrative as almost the only historical reference.
Experiential/emotional dimension
Smart’s experiential dimension encompasses meditation, intense feelings and altered states of consciousness (1996: 11). Many growth churches spring from Pentecostal traditions in which intense mystical experiences, such as glossolalia, were a vital part of spiritual life. Growth churches, at least in the west, have predominantly abandoned these traditions, or discourage them in public. Services are joyful multimedia experiences in perpetual anticipation of ‘awesome’ church events and even more earth-shaking promises.
At the entry point in the seeker’s journey, the worship experience emphasises comfort and familiarity. However, full membership involves a liminal phase, summed up in the strangely incongruous moment of the altar call. This ritual moment is the beginning of the process that, according to Warren, turns ‘consumers into contributors’ and ‘an audience into an army’ (Warren, 1995: 46). The newly enlisted proclaim the fundamentalism of not dogma but determination: ‘visioning’ ambitious goals and reaching them. They have to put up their hands – to come forward, be born again, be changed. Ushered then into more challenging environments beyond the reassurance of the seeker services, the newly committed join face-to-face study and support groups, or ‘cells’ as they are often called; they are nurtured into deeper commitment and the responsibility of attracting new consumers. The liminal phase of the altar call marks the transition from customer to member of the sales force.
Ethical/legal dimension
Fifth on Smart’s list is the dimension dealing with ‘norms and ideals of behaviour’. Here, again, growth and prosperity yield their own distinct imperatives. In much growth church literature, becoming wealthier and more successful is not merely desirable, but a moral duty. As at least five prosperity books’ titles declare, God Wants You … Rich (Anderson, 2009; Montrec, 2008; Pilzer, 1995; Reynolds, 2008; Winner, 2007). According to Lakewood pastor Joel Osteen, even those already enjoying ‘tremendous wealth, prestige and position’ must not ‘ever get satisfied with where you are’ (Osteen, 2004: 26). Those who are not rich – or, at Osteen’s church, striving to become even richer – are failing to fulfil God’s purposes.
The explicitness with which growth churches embrace prosperity theology varies. Warren disparages as ‘baloney’ Osteen’s and other pastors’ ‘idea that God wants everybody to be wealthy’ (van Biema, 2006). Nevertheless, Warren, who cites Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek among his major influences, fits easily into the broader category of growth-oriented theology, requiring strong cash flows.
The basic ethical imperative, the self-confident toiling after success, accentuates the sacred in everyday consumerism. The message is constantly upbeat. Yet, disguised among the relentless positives, a downside is never entirely out of view. The unwaveringly positive theology of self-improvement assumes a terrifying alternative: failure. The counterpoint to successful individuals and families is those who fail to meet the standards of achievement and consumption. The usually unnamed ‘enemy’ who seeks ‘pleasure’ at the expense of believers is, according to Wagner, Satan, whose ‘desire is for poverty to prevail … the spirit of poverty is a demonic agent of Satan, intent on preventing people from enjoying God-given prosperity’ (2008: 185).
Social dimension
Smart’s sixth dimension couples religion’s institutional aspects to its social setting, and growth theology is a truly global phenomenon. Successful megachurches reproduce themselves internationally: for example, Hillsong has outposts in Brisbane, Kiev, Stockholm, Moscow, Cape Town, London, Paris and New York. Fellow Sydney success-story Christian City Church (based at Phil Pringle’s Oxford Falls) claims ‘230 churches throughout Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Region, Asia, Africa, Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and South America’. Bill Hybels’s Willow Creek Association has offices in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa and the United Kingdom, organising local events under the Willow Creek banner. The Redeemed Christian Church of God, which began in Nigeria in 1952, now claims over 800 million adherents on every inhabited continent, according to the New York Times, in the process playing down indigenous Nigerian components of its theology and bringing it more into conformity with the prosperity-oriented, upper-middle-class message in favour in global Pentecostalism.
Despite the differences of language and surrounding national cultures, such churches exhibit remarkable uniformity of liturgy and presentation. Organisationally, too, growth churches leave behind both traditional and democratic models. In their place, charismatic senior pastors, commanding exemplary rewards, lead a hierarchy of professionals above a large army of volunteers. Beyond the welcoming foyer, growth churches rely on tough-minded, usually male, headship and obedience to an organisational culture.
The ecclesiology that replaced traditional denominational structures is called ‘apostolic’. In apostolic structures, each congregation is run by its senior pastor, following a form of government described approvingly by David Cartledge (2000) as ‘theocratic’, meaning that the leaders are directly appointed by God. Wagner calls it the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). NAR holds that the fivefold ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers and pastors, mentioned in Ephesians 4:11, has been reinstated in the modern church. Many NAR churches adopt some variation of what Wagner calls the ‘7 moulders of culture’ principle, borrowing from the idea, called ‘7 Mountains’ or ‘7 Spheres’ and enunciated, with slight variations, by Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, Youth With a Mission founder Loren Cunningham and American evangelical theologian Frances Schaeffer. This is the idea that evangelical Christians should aim to ‘take dominion’ in whatever sphere of life God has given them apostolic authority, until all seven ‘mountains’ of culture are under divine rule: family; church; education; media; arts and entertainment; economy, including scientific innovation and business; and government and politics.
Recall from the philosophical dimension that Wagner, Dollar and others draw a direct connection between the prosperity gospel and the quest for dominion. The NAR is its ecclesiological aspect – and spills over into secular governance, as ‘workplace apostles’ take authority in the ‘mountains’ of government, media, business and so on.
Material/artistic dimension
Smart’s final, material dimension covers a tradition’s physical expression, ‘from chapels to cathedrals to temples to mosques, from icons and divine statuary to books and pulpits’ (1996: 11), and here growth churches make a strong statement. Turning against spires and crosses in favour of the architectural vernacular of ‘resort modern’, megachurch auditoriums sit within multi-use complexes, following the logic of ex-urban, one-stop retail centres.
The architectural expansion narratives, retold in sermons and on websites, capture the centrality of growth. A tiny group began in the pastor’s lounge room; then borrowed, leased and finally bought a warehouse. Once sufficiently established, they commissioned purpose-built premises, completing the main auditorium, conference facilities, television studio, gymnasium and school, before ‘planting’ offshoots in nearby cities and foreign lands.
Willow Creek’s 120-acre campus quickly held so many cars that police had to direct its traffic. Visitors to Tennessee’s Brentwood Baptist Church are assisted by ‘Parking Lot Missionaries’. According to Warren, Saddleback boasts ‘30 acres just in parking, if you can imagine that. It’s like I’m in the Dumbo parking lot or the Goofy parking lot or whatever’ (Pew Forum, 2005). Pritchard likens the cars streaming into and out of Willow Creek to the traffic from a professional sporting event or rock concert (1996: 81).
The business-parked, digitised, screen-spangled, scientifically lit, fully miked complex might be seen as the latest in Christianity’s spatial conversions, which have both reflected and sanctified successive waves of economic and political change. Setting up on affordable land near highways, megachurches follow the logic of ‘one-stop’ shopping malls and ‘gated communities’ – privately owned and controlled-entry spaces that seek to replace city or village centres with a ‘cocoon’ promising ‘to filter out smog, heat, cold, rain, acid rain, or even abrasive social particles such as ethnic or racial groups, persons exhibiting unusual, bizarre or otherwise unruly behaviour’ (Jacobs, 1984: 93–94).
Kilde points out that megachurches identify themselves: with other contemporary places of peace, places where people spend their leisure hours (hopefully) untroubled by the cares of the world: the shopping mall, the sports arena, the movie theatre … the mall provides the feeling of worry-free comfort for which the megachurch strives. (2002: 219)
The capitalist ethic and the spirit of growth churches
Through and through, growth churches are closely aligned with consumerist capitalism in organisational structure, design elements, methods and message. Their buildings are consumer complexes, their theology is positive and anticipatory, and so forth. This is no mere incidental appropriation of the surrounding culture, but a conscious and consistent effort to align the church’s activities and message not with any national culture but with the culture of global capitalism.
Growth churches give their blessing to consumerist culture. They sacralise malls, ex-urban sprawl, car-dependency, single-mindedness, incessant marketing, branding. Their profane is the world of the non-successful, judged according to the marketing ideals of happy, suburban families and all-conquering entrepreneurs.
The alignment with consumerism has been noted before (e.g. Twitchell, 2004); but, much more comprehensively, growth churches actively model their approach on global capitalist corporations, complete with entrepreneurial CEOs and top-down management. Their leaders are exemplars of charismatic, entrepreneurial visioning with a strict corporatism, based on ‘body of Christ’ theology, within an intensely globalised society. Bobbie Houston identifies numerous direct parallels between Hillsong and a ‘corporate company. We don’t call our people clients, we call them a congregation. We don’t measure success in profit, we measure success in lives altered.’ Also like a corporation, she explains that Hillsong has a ‘vision statement’, and offers ‘customer service’ which ‘flows from God’s heart to love people’ (Bobbie Houston, 1998: 139). Growth churches are the latest, and arguably most comprehensive, iteration of a lasting closeness between especially Christian and capitalist salesmanship, the one reflecting and shaping the other.
Proving their entrepreneurial talents within the marketplace, leading pastors proudly seek inspiration beyond church walls. In Courageous Leadership, Hybels reveals that the two men who shaped his thinking on matters like staff performance are ‘Jesus and Peter Drucker’ (Hybels 2000: 160). Drucker (1909–2005), known as the ‘man who invented management’ and the ‘grandfather of marketing’, made his name with an early study of General Motors, The Concept of the Corporation (1946), and popularised ‘management by objectives’ in The Practice of Management (1954). Rick Warren, too, consulted him for more than 20 years on Saddleback’s ‘purpose-driven’ approach, explaining: ‘Everything is purpose driven, because Peter taught me that it starts with a mission. You have got to know what your mission is’ (Maciariello, 2008: 178). The mission is expansion: personal, statistical, architectural, cultural, economic.
Having adopted modern management techniques, pastors respond with motivational courses aimed at business. Pastor Casey Treat, of Washington’s Christian Faith Centre, offers seminars entitled ‘Accelerate’, where business leaders learn to ‘Expand your vision, influence and favor and see greater progress and success than ever before’. Willow Creek runs an annual Leadership Summit (recent speakers have included General Colin Powell and former President Jimmy Carter) and frequent Blue Sky events, ‘Where Business, Leadership and Ministry Meet’. Its consulting arm, Willow Creek Association, is led by James Mellado, who has co-authored a Harvard Business School case study on the church’s success (Schlessinger and Mellado, 1991).
The lessons of growth are disseminated through books that stand alongside (and frequently outsell) airport-style management literature. The marketing campaign for Rick Warren’s 40-day study programme, which stimulated 21 million sales of The Purpose-Driven Life in its first two years, inspired a textbook aimed beyond church businesses into the general marketing world (Stielstra, 2005). In turn, Coca Cola, Ford and WalMart adopted Warren’s Forty Days of Purpose programme (Pew Forum, 2005). So seamless is the sharing of technique and content between spiritual and commercial marketers that the website of Mark Stevens, author of God is a Salesman: Learn the Power of Invisible Selling (2007) and Rich is a Religion (2008), promises: ‘The power of faith can be cultivated for success in business and in life’. In December 2007, information technology magazine Baseline ran a series of 10 articles expounding the principles of Creflo Dollar’s 15,000-strong World Changers Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia. Commercial enterprises, no less than churches, could benefit from World Changers techniques to ‘Know Thy Customer’, ‘Keep Attendees Involved’, and turn their loyalty to commercial advantage. Similar business-lessons-from-megachurches articles have appeared in The Economist (2005), Forbes.com (Kroll, 2003) and academic management journals (Maresco, 2008).
To be clear: the argument here is not that that growth churches give away their religiosity in the face of the secular economy, becoming merely a ‘religion-like’ movement (as one interpretation of Smart might suggest). Nor should religion be construed as an irrelevant accretion upon growth churches’ capitalist practice. On the contrary, growth churches and other businesses share the same spiritual space. Seized by the vision of growth, they share the entrepreneurial spirit, the hierarchical corporate structures and the marketing techniques of entertainment, conversion and branding. Growth churches are the purest demonstration that, as Walter Benjamin and others have argued, capitalism has become the unassailable global religion (Benjamin, 1996: 288–291). In growth church campuses, no less than in advertising offices, consumerism re-enchants the world according to its own lights.
Conclusion
In the last decades of the 20th century, approximating the late capitalist era, entrepreneurial pastors set out to renovate Christianity. They replaced traditional church cultures, from the physical shape of auditoria to the canon of favoured Bible verses. An analysis of growth church religion through Smart’s seven dimensions demonstrates that Christian leaders have embraced both organisational structures and methods and the communicative style and messages of businesses. They have spared no effort to merge with culturally intensified capitalism.
Replacing stained-glass windows and pews with potted palms and lapel microphones, and sin and humility with personal growth and prosperity, arguably amounts to a New Reformation. For growth churches do not sweep away theological wisdom naively or even opportunistically. They do not adopt the forms and fittings of convention centres and business parks in mere obedience to the imperatives of urban planning and interior design. Cinema seating, miles of cable conduit and the ‘Son Rise Café’ and ‘Heavenly Bucks’ coffee are no mere add-on attractions, bringing customers on site. Far from bland copies, they are alive with urgent references to business, not least demands for cash, while putting on marketing’s unremittingly positive face.
They are the corporations that sell the religion of corporations. Self-confidence becomes readily transferable, and infused with an odour of sanctity that helps to normalise, and even renders virtuous, capitalism’s constant bombardment. Finally, growth churches are producers of meaning: cornering the market in ‘visioning’, baptising prosperity and sanctifying sales, they help make some overall sense of capitalism. They reproduce, naturalise, enlarge, enchant and, to some degree, civilise it. Having cleared away antiquated encrustations, their theology and practice match core capitalist ideology. Growth churches are capitalism’s cathedrals.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Michael Symons, collaborator on the larger project of which this paper is a part.
Biography
Marion MADDOX holds PhDs in theology (Flinders University, 1992) and political philosophy (UNSW 2000) and has taught religious studies and Australian politics in universities in Australia and New Zealand. She is currently Director of the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University, Sydney. As the 1999 Australian Parliamentary Fellow, she interviewed some 50 sitting and retired members and senators of the Australian parliament, leading to her first book, For God and Country: Religious Dynamics in Australian Federal Politics (2001, Parliament of Australia). Her subsequent work includes the acclaimed God Under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian Politics (2005, Allen and Unwin). She began writing about megachurches’ relationship to late capitalism while Visiting Professor at the Observatoire du Religieux at Sciences-Po, Aix in 2010.
Address: Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Faculty of Arts Level 3, C5C Research Hub West, Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Sydney, Australia. Email: