The Willow Creek megachurch chain in Chicagoland advertises itself with a picture of a very professional looking dander and the slogan, This Is Church? Apparently, or so I'm told by someone knowledgeable who has studied this for purposes of marketing analysis, the ordinary services -- one of which, in downtown Shytown, is large enough to require them to rent to the Auditorium Theater (designed by Sullivan & Adler) for Sunday mornings -- have virtually _no_ religious content, just entertainment and uplift and social support. For the "Outer Party," that's' what the church provides. The "Inner Party" is a dedicated cadre of hard right deeply committed evangelists, but they are less than 5% of the people who go to services. The Church is growing as fast as they can get zoning clearances to put up big box structures.
It is an interesting question why the right wing churches do better than progressive denominations, especially since the main appeal to the outside world is not a life commitment to hard right religion and politics, but something calculatedly quasi-secular. Also because until the late 1970s or early 1980s the evangelicals were not particularly political at all and their politics were about half-and-half liberal and conservative, just like the rest of the population. Abortion apparently has something to do with it, but why did that particular button cause such a big seismic shift?
--- Chuck <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> Andy F wrote:
>
> > Consider Bitch's observation that a lot of the
> megachurches provide a
> > lot of the day-to-day social services that unions,
> coops and gummit
> > use to provide. Right now it looks like eternal
> salvation and daycare
> > vs. a higher minimum wage and ...?
>
> I think lots of people go to church on a regular
> basis for the social
> aspect of religion. You would think that the number
> of people who do
> church because they want to achieve "eternal life"
> after deathis
> diwndling among churchgoers. Although the growth of
> the Southern
> Baptists suggests otherwise.
>
> But just look at what churches do. They spend large
> amounts of money on
> social services.
>
> I think this suggests that leftist could attract
> people if they spent
> more time "building community" and
> counter-institutions. After all, we
> have more concrete things to offer than religions
> which are selling
> heaven and hell.
>
> Chuck
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