Second Subproject:
"Spirituelle Wal Marts?" The Lakewood-Megachurch as the Church of Modernity in the United States?
The increased academic interest in in megachurches in the US can be attributed to a significant growth in the membership of these Christian-orientated organisations in recent years. The number of weekly attendees of the biggest and fastest growing church in the US, Lakewood Church in Houston, for example, is more than 47,000. Lakewood Church will be subject of the second subproject.
The relocation of the Church into the former Compaq Centre, which was home of the Houston basketball club, the Houston Rockets, seems to be a logical consequence of the rapid growth of this Church. Whilst Ann Loveland and Otis Wheeler have a diachronic view of megachurches in the US concerning their development from Meetinghouse to Megachurch, various more recent studies are concerned with the economic success of theses large-scale enterprises.
The mostly sociological view on change, modernity and Churches in the US registers the ascent of spiritual Wal Marts on the American marketplace of religions however rarely goes behind the scenes. A comprehensive bottom-up analysis of the strategies of gaining and maintaining membership in megachurches has so far only been partly undertaken. This research project wishes to start here.
Using a multimethodological approach based in participatory observation and qualitative social-sciences methods the 'myth of megachurches' will be academically nurtured. Continually reflecting the paradigm of selective modernity, the medial and aesthetic representations of megachurch teachings will be investigated. The alleged "dinner with the devil" (Guinness 1993) of megachurches, will, according to the hypothesis of this subproject, turn out to be the conscious integration of and adaptation to the particularities of modernity.
Information
- Contributors: Dr. Katja Rakow
- Start: August 2010
Lakewood Church, by Rainer Ebert
Part of a Wallpaper, by lakewood.cc
Subprojects
First Subproject: "A Church Without Walls": The Raider Nation and the Nation Ministries as Postmodern Forms of Communitarisation.
(Dr. Anthony Santoro)
Second Subproject: "Spiritual Wal Marts?": The Lakewood-Megachurch as the Church of Modernity in the United States?
(Dr. Katja Rakow)
Third Subproject: "It's a sin to bore a kid with the gospel!": Creationist Parks in the US as All-Inclusive Religious Providers.
(Sebastian Emling, M.A.)
