The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty-first Century

by Stephen Ellingson

Religious traditions provide the stories and rituals that define the core values of church members. Yet modern life in America can make those customs seem undesirable, even impractical. As a result, many congregations refashion church traditions so they may remain powerful and salient. How do these transformations occur? How do clergy and worshipers negotiate which aspects should be preserved or discarded?

Focusing on the innovations of several mainline Protestant churches in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stephen Ellingson’s The Megachurch and the Mainline provides new understandings of the transformation of spiritual traditions. For Ellingson, these particular congregations typify a new type of Lutheranism—one which combines the evangelical approaches that are embodied in the growing legion of megachurches with American society’s emphasis on pragmatism and consumerism. Here Ellingson provides vivid descriptions of congregations as they sacrifice hymns in favor of rock music and scrap traditional white robes and stoles for Hawaiian shirts, while also making readers aware of the long history of similar attempts to Americanize the Lutheran tradition.

This is an important examination of a religion in flux—one that speaks to the growing popularity of evangelicalism in America.

Genres: Religion, Sociology

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Susie Meister]

This book is about how and why a religious tradition is changed and how evangelicalism, seeker spirituality, and utilitarian ethos of american society lead congregations to alter their received traditions. Ellingson argues that leaders construct crises of meaning and membership in order to justify reworking of the tradition. The author is building upon Bellah's Habits of the Heart and Clark's boomer scholarship. While Elligson acknowledges cultural theories that explaining religious change, he emphasizes changes in consumer preferences as the catalyst for change. His study focuses on Lutheran congregations and he describes a variety of explanations that leaders use to explain declining numbers. One of these explanations is the church doesn't do enough to bring in the unchurched/poor, which means they need to downplay their tradition to attract them. Evangelicals blame mainline's decline on not enough evangelicalism. One way mainlines are adapting is by reframing their traditions to fit better with pop psychology. They're abandoning rhetoric about how to be a good church member in favor of what it means to be a good Christian.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book won an award in sociology of religion because it offers a close investigation of a trend with a strong sociological theoretical frame. In a nutshell, it observes how the culture and resources of megachurches are translated to mainline denominational contexts--specifically Lutheran congregations in California.

What is especially insightful is how he explains that congregation leaders can create a crisis-mentality and thus facilitate the dismantling of denominational tradition in favour of evangelical technique.

There is much more in here. One comment: it does appear the author has a certain nostalgia for the old Lutheran forms and an aversion to the evangelical culture he examines. This gives it a critical edge but at the same time it may lack a fair appraisal of the evangelical megachurch trend. In Canada, for example, as I explore in my book The Subversive Evangelical: The Ironic Charisma of an Irreligious Megachurch some megachurches maintain denominational commitment while embracing evangelical practises.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've learned how seemingly benign additions to worship can radically change the theological bent of the whole.