It wasn’t that long ago that I was trying to get reporters to wake up to a whole new world of charismatic/Pentecostal churches that are networked into a movement led by modern-day apostles and prophets.
I chaired a panel at a 2017 gathering of religion reporters in Nashville that had two representatives of this movement plus a third person who opposed it. But very few writers caught on. One reason is because it’s so tough to define. Observers and participants can’t even agree on a name. Some call the movement the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and others call it the apostolic/prophetic movement.
Then Jan. 6 happened at the U.S. Capitol.
Now it seems as though reporters can’t get enough of asking: Who were these people? Every week now seems to be something new about this movement, like this piece in Christianity Today, which is a fairly decent overview of what’s happened since last fall. The reporter wrung some quotes out of reclusive former prophet Jeremiah Johnson, which is a first.
My one complaint is that the CT piece is several months late, as some of us were reporting on this in April. Plus, given the extra time the reporter had, I would have liked to have seen fresher material. And California evangelist Shawn Bolz should have been dinged for wrongly prophesying the end of the coronavirus back in April of 2020. The upbeat note the article ends on doesn’t reflect the reality that the majority of the false prophets out there have not repented nor apologized.
On the other side of the spectrum, the Washington Post has come out with two pieces, one including the “cowboy shaman” so visible in the attack on the Capitol and the other an account of a visit to Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth.
The first piece was an attempt to explain just what these Capitol invaders believe.
Many forces contributed to the attack on the Capitol, including Trump’s false claims of electoral victory and American anger with institutions. But part of the mix, say experts on American religion, is the fact that the country is in a period when institutional religion is breaking apart, becoming more individualized and more disconnected from denominations, theological credentials and oversight.
That has created room for what Yale University sociologist Phil Gorski calls a religious “melee, a free for all.”
I’d definitely agree that it’s everyone for him or herself out there. However, independent non-denominational churches have been on the rise since the late 1970s. It just took scholars several decades to start tracking them. And do you think the typical church member really cares what the theologians are saying? Back to the Post:
“There have been these periods of breakdowns and ferment and reinvention in the past, and every indication is we’re in the middle of one of those now,” he said. “Such moments are periods of opportunity and creativity but also of danger and violence.”
Some scholars see this era as a spiritually fertile period, like the ones that produced Pentecostalism or Mormonism. Others worry about religious illiteracy and the lack of supervision over everything from theological pronouncements to financial practices.
There is a group called the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability that was the desired seal of approval for how ministries — at least the ones that choose to take part — handled their finances. There’s no theological equivalent.
Even before Jan. 6, some sociologists said the fastest-growing group of American Christians are those associated with independent “prophets” who largely operate outside denominationalism.
I understand who and what the reporter is referring to in terms of the prophets but most people had to have skipped through the sentence, not grasping its import, plus the idea was not developed further.
Instead we get a story about the range of independent souls — unattached to any denomination or church — who’ve gotten their 15 minutes of fame, such as the horned “QAnon shaman” Jake Chansley who was hardly representative of the type of Christian present at the Capitol melee. The Post article says that court documents and images of some 500 people charged in the Jan. 6 attack were analyzed to glean some idea of the faith background of those who were there. That’s a chunk of research.
Three were profiled: A cowboy pastor from New Mexico, a children’s music teacher from the District and a real estate agent from Texas.
Church-wise, they were lone rangers; loosely or not at all affiliated with a house of worship.
So that goes to prove –- what? There is a quote from a Southern Baptist seminary president saying that people untethered to a church (without a pastor to lend balance) tend to go theologically wacko; an odd assertion. Guess that’s because I know so many folks in churches with supposedly spiritually literate pastors who are likewise off the rails.
In a further effort to understand this odd Christian group, the Post sent one of its national reporters to attend Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth that fits the description of the kind of place that would appear to favor Donald Trump. It was:
… a church that represents a rapidly growing kind of Christianity in the United States, one whose goal includes bringing under the authority of a biblical God every facet of life, from schools to city halls to Washington, where the pastor had traveled a month after the Jan. 6 insurrection and filmed himself in front of the U.S. Capitol saying quietly, “Father, we declare America is yours.”
Now he stood in front of the glowing map, a 38-year-old White man in skinny jeans telling a congregation of some 1,500 people what he said the Lord had told him: that Fort Worth was in thrall to four “high-ranking demonic forces.” That all of America was in the grip of “an anti-Christ spirit.” That the Lord had told him that 2021 was going to be the “Year of the Supernatural,” a time when believers would rise up and wage “spiritual warfare” to advance God’s Kingdom, which was one reason for the bright-red T-shirt he was wearing. It bore the name of a church elder who was running for mayor of Fort Worth. …
We’re never going to get very far in such stories without politics showing up.
The church is called Mercy Culture, and it is part of a growing Christian movement that is nondenominational, openly political and has become an engine of former president Donald Trump’s Republican Party. … Its most successful leaders are considered apostles and prophets, including some with followings in the hundreds of thousands, publishing empires, TV shows, vast prayer networks, podcasts, spiritual academies, and branding in the form of T-shirts, bumper stickers and even flags.
It is a world in which demons are real, miracles are real, and the ultimate mission is not just transforming individual lives but also turning civilization itself into their version of God’s Kingdom: one with two genders, no abortion, a free-market economy, Bible-based education, church-based social programs and laws such as the ones curtailing LGBTQ rights now moving through statehouses around the country.
Wow, that does sound like a liberal nightmare, doesn’t it? Many would say that it’s actually America in the 1950s.
As we read an excruciating account of every detail in this church’s endless Sunday service, the place doesn’t sound where any of us would want to be. The writer is trying to introduce readers to a whole different creature than the Southern Baptistified evangelical so often covered by the press. If you watch the video atop this piece, you’ll see what a typical service looks and sounds like. Back to the Post:
Increasingly, this is the world that the term “evangelical voter” refers to — not white-haired Southern Baptists in wooden pews but the comparatively younger, more diverse, more extreme world of millions drawn to leaders who believe they are igniting a new Great Awakening in America, one whose epicenter is Texas.
Here we are, with the inside-the-Beltway reporter exploring that zoo of bizarre religious personalities known as Texas.
By the way, I disagree that Texas is the center of it all. There are significant gatherings in southern California, Nashville, western North Carolina, Orlando and I’m predicting movement in Idaho as well. However, Colorado Springs -– once an evangelical bastion –- is not part of this movement by a long shot.
I think the story aims to portrays this church accurately enough, fog machines and all. But there is this element of fear and loathing in the piece and a sense that this Pentecostal world is just too foreign for the reporter (as opposed to being the fastest growing form of faith in global Christianity). Thus we get lots of scare quotes to illustrate to the digital visitors how odd the natives really are.
I will admit some of the folks in her story really are odd). Remember such independent churches are the growing edge of Protestant Christianity worldwide. These churches feel shackled by denominations; even a Pentecostal one like the Assemblies of God, which has lost congregations to independent movements in recent decade. (University of Akron scholar Margaret Poloma has a good essay here about how, as the AG has gained in respectability, it’s lost a lot of the verve and daring that first attracted people.
Why do places like Mercy Church grow? Why are they becoming so powerful? For starters, they offer visual stimulation (witness the light show each Sunday on the church stage) and intense religious experiences buttressed by musicians who can milk every drop of emotion out of worshippers. Let’s say there were no loudspeakers, no band, no drummer, no pyrotechnics. Would this church even exist?
Watch a video of a Mercy service. What’s the difference between this place and a Christian rock concert? Actually, maybe all Mercy may be is a Christian rock concert.
Reporters, try to get past the wealth of these churches and the loud music. Ask harder questions, such as these: How often do members actually interact with members of the staff? Does the pastor have a clue who any of the people are who fill the auditorium each Sunday? Are these churches really incubators for what happened Jan. 6 in Washington? How is that happening, in terms of church programs? How many of these congregants will still be at Mercy two years from now?
Maybe the typical person at Mercy truly believes that he or she experiences God there. I wonder if those folks experience each other. Assuming that most don’t, Mercy and the zillions of churches like it are glorified concert halls.
The truth is: Many of these independent churches are a mile wide and an inch deep. I doubt that many in these crowds seriously listen to the pastor/speakers and I bet most of these pastors haven’t a clue of who the attendees are. Again, these churches aren’t new. The Rev. John Osteen and then his son, Joel, have pastored the country’s largest church in Houston for many years. That’s one template for what is going on.
I was not convinced at the end of either piece that independent charismatic churches hatched most of the Jan. 6 perpetrators. None of the three people profiled belonged to one. Some people are too independent for the independent churches.
That said, independent churches should be part of a religion reporter’s beat, similar to Catholics and Jews. That’s where all the innovation will come from in the foreseeable future.
FIRST IMAGE: Photo by John Price posted at Unsplash.
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