God as a drug: The rise of American megachurches

[rug]

American megachurches use stagecraft, sensory pageantry, charismatic leadership and an upbeat, unchallenging vision of Christianity to provide their congregants with a powerful emotional religious experience, according to research from the University of Washington.

August 19, 2012
Provided by American Sociological Association

"Membership in megachurches is one of the leading ways American Christians worship these days, so, therefore, these churches should be understood," said James Wellman, associate professor of American religion at the University of Washington. "Our study shows that -- contrary to public opinion that tends to pass off the megachurch movement as consumerist religion -- megachurches are doing a pretty effective job for their members. In fact, megachurch members speak eloquently of their spiritual growth."

Wellman and co-authors Katie E. Corcoran and Kate Stockly-Meyerdirk, University of Washington graduate students in sociology and comparative religion respectively, studied 2008 data provided by the Leadership Network on 12 nationally representative American megachurches.

Corcoran will present their paper, titled "'God is Like a Drug': Explaining Interaction Ritual Chains in American Megachurches," at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

Megachurches, or churches with 2,000 or more congregants, have grown in number, size, and popularity in recent years, coming to virtually dominate the American religious landscape. More than half of all American churchgoers now attend the largest 10 percent of churches.

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-god-drug-american-megachurches.html

[unc70]

1. Megachurch attendance appears to be dropping

Probably 80% attend churches who size ranks on the top 20%. Remember Pareto? From the article, it sounds like this is more about typical new covenant teaching and less about size of church.

There have been a lot of news articles discussing the decline in attendance at many of megachurches. Many of the arena style prosperity ones have been hit the hardest by the loss of prosperity.

Some of the large, more liberal mainline denominations are retaining or growing their membership.

Note that a congregation of 2,000 probably means attendance of maybe 400-600 max except Easter or Christmas. That counts all services. Probably seats 2/3 that at one time -- so 250-400. Doesn't sound all that mega on the low end. I realize a few seat 5-10 thousand.

[longship]

2. How can it be a "drug"?

I think it is nothing more and nothing less than a meme, what Dawkins would call a "virus of the mind".

Dawkins used the concept of the meme in his book, The Selfish Gene, as an example of how evolution works. But it was a pretty damned good example because psychological and neuroscience research has pretty much backed up the concept. No! It isn't yet hard science. But -- DAMN! -- a lot of people are still talking about memes, especially with respect to religion. There is even substantive research on the subject. Dawkins may have been right. It very much looks like it, although Dawkins is still skeptical. And he invented the damned thing!

I believe religion is a meme, a brain virus. Daniel Dennett puts it this way:

"Every time you say or hear something, it makes another copy in your brain."

"Every time you say or hear something, it makes another copy in your brain."

This time read it out loud so you can say it and hear it:

"Every time you say or hear something, it makes another copy in your brain."

I have just planted a meme in your brain.

Now you know what a meme is and why it is such a powerful cultural concept. BTW, it is also the reason why a plurality of people in this country believe that government is bad, taxes on the wealthy are bad, universal health care is bad, education is bad, religion is good (if it's Christian, er, my Christianity, not yours), and the military is wonderful (until they complete their tours of duty, or are wounded).

Those are memes in action.

Recommended read: Daniel Dennett's book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon where Dennett extends Dawkins conjecture into religion as a meme. Furthermore, he backs it up with data. He admits the tentativeness of the conjecture, but finds the research compelling enough to write a whole book about it. (And unnumbered academic papers, no doubt.)

No, religion is not the "opiate of the masses", as is in context often misquoted.

It is yet another meme, a cultural virus, albeit a very long lived one. We see many of them.

Elvis is king. Well, I think Jussi Bjorling and Robert Merrill are kings, and Maria Callas and Frederica Von Stade, and Janet Baker are queens.

These, also are memes. I love opera because classical music was imprinted in my brain as I grew up. I love opera and despise Elvis because, although I grew up seeing Elvis on Ed Sullivan and Robert Merrill on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, I never liked Elvis, and always liked Merrill, and Von Stade and Callas and Bjorling and fucking Glenn Gould who single handedly destroyed all my J. S. Bach memes with a single recording, his 1955 recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations.

We have to learn how these viruses plant themselves into our culture. We need to be smarter -- and I think we are -- than our opposition. But, I worry that they see it and we don't.

Do we take this seriously?

I just do not know. But, I firmly believe that I will vote for Obama and my neighbor will vote for Romney because of memes. The Romney brain virus has infested his brain -- he's a Seventh Day Adventist, look up Millerite, so his brain is particularly receptive to that meme, just as mine is to Bach and Mozart and many others.

Thanks for following this ramble.


Memes are important here. Dennett has it right, I think.

[edhopper]

6. That is a nice, concise

review of the meme theory. Not a ramble at all.

[longship]

7. Sorry, it was a bit of a ramble., just a bit.

[Jim__]

8. How can it be a drug?

Well, from the article:

Wellman said, "That's what you see when you go into megachurches -- you see smiling people; people who are dancing in the aisles, and, in one San Diego megachurch, an interracial mix I've never seen anywhere in my time doing research on American churches. We see this experience of unalloyed joy over and over again in megachurches. That's why we say it's like a drug."

You say: I think it is nothing more and nothing less than a meme, what Dawkins would call a "virus of the mind". I don't know of many viruses that have that effect; but many drugs do; and while one can become overly dependent on religion, that is also true of drugs.

[longship]

11. Well, Dawkins is using virus metaphorically.

Since the brain is kind of a unique organ, which operates differently than any other, the language about its operation gets a bit fuzzy (outside of neurology).

But it is undoubtedly true that Every time you say or hear something it makes another copy in your brain. That is how memes are created and propagate via culture to establish themselves.

How in the Sam Hell do you think the Republicans have a vast plurality of people convinced that if we just let the wealthy get wealthier, the country will be better off? Samuel Clemens and Goebbels both knew about this, too. If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it is true.

The meme model works, so far. Dawkins didn't mean it as such, but he was wrong. That is actually how the brain seems to work. Science is amazing sometimes.

[Jim__]

13. Yes, and the article uses "drug" analogically.

As in: ... we say it's like a drug.

As for repetition strengthening memory, that was known long before Dawkins said anything about memes. When I was in grammar school we recited the multiplication tables every day from something like 3rd grade through 6th.

How in the Sam Hell do you think the Republicans have a vast plurality of people convinced that if we just let the wealthy get wealthier, the country will be better off? Samuel Clemens and Goebbels both knew about this, too. If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it is true.

Do you have a source for: ... the Republicans have a vast plurality of people convinced that if we just let the wealthy get wealthier, the country will be better off? Do you have a source to support that statement? I know people who vote republican who are not convinced that economic policy is valid.

Then, having granted that repetition strengthens memory and that this has been well-known for a long time, the question as to why people believe what they believe is, indeed, complex and, as far as I am aware, the answer is not known.

You raise the name of Goebbels. Questions about the Nazi rise to power are one example of the difficulty involved in understanding why people believe and act as they do. The rise to power of the Nazis in Germany was contrary to any supposed memetic inculcation that the German people had. The chaotic state of Germany following the Versailles Treaty made the Nazi insanity palatable to a portion of the German public. But, to actually approach a full understanding of what happened would involve years, maybe a lifetime, of study and research.

[Politicalboi]

3. Here's one of those Megachurches now

&feature=relmfu

[freshwest]

16. Loved that movie! Here's a megachurch with over 40,000 visitors each week.

Yes, everythinng that can be imagined.

[MineralMan]

4. "stagecraft, sensory pageantry, charismatic leadership"

Hmm...sound like lots of churches, mega or just old and hugely established. That's why I enjoy visiting the Russian Orthodox church here once a year. The liturgy and how it is presented is quite interesting. Pomp and circumstance, to be sure.

[trotsky]

9. LOL, I had the exact same thought.

Especially "stagecraft, sensory pageantry" - ummm, Catholic Church, anyone?

There are tried-and-true formulas in the religious arena. It should come as no surprise to encounter them so frequently.

[MineralMan]

10. Yup. Most religious liturgies

include both stagecraft and pageantry. It comes with the territory. That's why the post was funny without meaning to be.

[freshwest]

17. The place where one can stop thinking and start repeating, I'd say.

Thinking is painful.

[MineralMan]

18. It's especially effective if the liturgy is in a language

you don't know. Then, you can hear it without understanding it, and respond from memory. The RCC made a big mistake when they switched the Mass to the vernacular languages. Much of the mystery of the liturgy was lost in the process.

[freshwest]

20. Mystery = Authority.

[meow2u3]

5. Ever heard of religious addiction? That's what appears to be happening here.

In other words, we're dealing with addicts, but not in the traditional sense of the word.

http://thecommandmentsofmen.blogspot.com/2011/06/religious-addiction.html

http://www.lexpages.com/SGN/paschal/religious_addiction.html

When Religion Goes Bad: Part 2 — Religious Addiction
In the first part of this series we introduced the idea that religion can “go bad.” This might not be a difficult or threatening topic for some people. If our experiences with religion have been neutral or positive, we may even find it difficult to imagine that religion can ever go bad. Many of us, however, have been exposed to environments where “religion gone bad” is not an abstract possibility but a personal and deeply painful reality. Many of us carry in our minds and our spirits the painful effects of religion that has done damage. Starting with this issue of STEPS we look at a variety of ways in which religion can become a problem in our lives—starting with religious addiction.
http://www.spiritualabuse.com/?page_id=46


http://thewartburgwatch.com/2010/08/02/characteristics-of-religious-addicts-and-toxic-beliefs-of-a-toxic-faith/

"Toxic faith is a destructive and dangerous involvement in a religion that allows the religion, not a relationship with God, to control a person's life." Stephen Arberburn and Jack Felton



Today, we will take an indepth look at toxic faith and who is prone to become involved in this false religion. According to the book Toxic Faith, "people broken by various experiences, people from dysfunctional families, people with unrealistic expectations, and people out for their own gain or comfort seem especially prone to it. It is abusive and manipulative and can become addictive." (p. 19)

[MineralMan]

12. Stagecraft and pageantry, eh?

Good thing those established, conservative churches don't stoop to that level, huh?

[ButterflyBlood]

14. Yeah the Catholic church has far more "stagecraft and pagentry" than contemporary churches

Most of those just consist of a band playing some standard music today and someone often in jeans speaking. Oh so they use powerpoint and some high tech stuff, big deal. By that standard a college lecture is full of "stagecraft and pagentry".

[rug]

15. Cool picture.

[MineralMan]

19. Thanks. The Roman Catholic Church pretty much invented the use

of pageantry and stagecraft, and did a pretty good job of charismatic leadership, too. These days, that hasn't all been working so well, though. Recent Masses I've attended have seemed all to similar to Protestant services. It's good to maintain a unique brand...when you become more generic, there's little reason for people to follow. The RCC seems to be in need of some modern branding advice, if their enterprise isn't to slowly fade and disappear. A new CEO, perhaps...

[rug]

21. The picture is cool, your musings far less interesting than Bernini's work.

Contrary to your, I'm sure objective, view, the liturgy is doing fine.