What do you think?
By What Authority: The Rise of Personality Cults in American Christianity
Very RARE edition!! UNIQUE offer!! Don’t wait to be OWNER of this special piece of HISTORY!!!
232 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 16, 2025
The religious landscape of America has long been shaped by and a beneficiary of the mass media. Can we understand the American Church without reference to the mass media? I don’t think so and Richard Quebedeaux provides an excellent starting point for understanding this seemingly invisible force that permeates so much of American religiosity and creates, what he calls “The Electronic Church”.
Before, I go on, I think it is important to note that, from what I have been able to discern, the author was a supporter (as far as I can tell?) of the heretical and non-Christian “Unification Church” – a strange, 20th century Korean cult that I had never heard of before. This means that Quebedeaux’s analysis has to be carefully weighed and sifted, since his own rubric is eccentric, silly, and off-kilter, but I still think that his analysis has important insights for modern evangelical Christians who often overlook this key area of influence and are unknowingly shaped by media.
Below I will cherry pick several observations:
He describes popular religion as the “electronic church,” meaning that American religiosity is transmitted through and shaped entirely by the mass media. I think it is very easy to a draw a straight line from the televangelist days of “the Hour of Power” in the 1980s, to the podcast, youtube, livestream, twitter days of the 2020s. What are the features of the electronic church?
1) it creates meaning in a “homeless” and “aimless” culture through visibility and publicity. “The aspiring pastor knows that the best evidence for a successful local church is the establishment of its own TV ministry” (70). Let this be a warning to all would-be pastor podcasters. The void of real world shared community (for example, in the embodied fellowship of a local church) is filled through the phantasma of media. Through a monthly subscription, you now “belong,” by listening to the preacher on TV, you are “fed,” by wearing the merch (for example the ‘Jesus First’ pins of Jerry Falwell) you even “look” like you are part of this community. One difference in our social media age is that instead of a ‘mass media,’ you are now able to customize your religious identity – any small organization or business or peddler of evangelical wares can build its own group of fans. In conclusion this “mediated” world becomes their primary view of reality – electronic church is my church.
2) the success of a church or religious method is based on publicity.
“Today, however, born-again (or otherwise religious) stars or superstars attain their status as ‘leaders’ simply by being famous, by being visible – as a beauty queen, a pop singer, a corporate executive, a politician – and nothing else. Such a leader no longer needs a theological education and formal training and experience in the ministry, because success – in any field – gives them their authority.” (114)
The assumption is that if a pastor or teacher or evangelist is speaking in the public, televised, or electrified medium, he must be an authority figure to whom I should and do listen. What gives him this clout and influence? It is simply that fact that he has a large fan base. He has reach and so he must be speaking the truth (and, just apply that logic to any major media outlet like CNN or Foxnews). In other words, he is a talking head, a name that people recognize, and “Look, he has a podcast” means that he has something to say. The democratization of media, such as blogs, allows anyone and everyone to say something in public and therefore provide the veneer of authority.
We should contrast this authority based on publicity with authority based on sacrifice. True authority is not achieved by rubbing shoulders with celebrities (as if celebrities were the voices of authority). Nor does authority rest on how many followers you have. Real authority is given. For example, the elders in a church are appointed or set up, not at the whim of the people, but through the input of the people, through their real life work in the church, and through the clear calling that God has set upon them. This authority is real, personal, and God-given. Another example is the authority of a mother and a father over their children. This is a natural, God given, authority, one that does not rest on choice, preference or publicity. The authority of publicity is inherently based on a depersonalized order because it is driven by mass media.
One might ask why the public and visible personality has more attraction than the personal pastor that you have known for a decade? I think the answer is because the electronic church really allows for the user to be his own authority. The uncomfortable fact of having real life elders and pastors in a real world community with actual family is that you cannot be anonymous. If you don’t like what your own pastor says, you still have to live together and go church together. If you don’t like what the talking head on the podcast says, you can just hit the pause button. Because electronic church is “remote controlled” then you can be all kinds of holy without budging from your couch.
3) “electronic church” lacks the inherent ability to be a community or a church. “Biblically speaking, community is to be found in the church as the extended family of God, a concept that the institutional church in America has tried to model – without success – and one that any kind of ‘invisible’ religion, by its very nature, is incapable of modeling” (177). I do not agree wholly with the first premise of this sentence, however, the conclusion is correct. The so-called “electronic church” cannot be a community of persons. What the author, however, fails to recognize is that the institutional church in America, for all of its faults, is that community, and that will include its failures and ups and downs. I sense this criticism is why he leans into a cultic idea of the church.
The solution to mediafied Christianity is not to create another subcultural church, as, for example, every American cult does. But rather to lean into the church, its need for reformation, its need to repent, and its need for the Word of God. We need to lean into the historic church, maintain the creeds of the past, the worship of God’s people, and the traditions that have been handed down. All of this needs to be subject to the Word of God, without rejecting the people of God. This is the kind of complex work that the popular religion of Americans mitigates against.
4) the electronic church adopts the corporate, business model to success. Quebedeaux analyzes the business model of Robert Schuller (famous for The Hour of Power and the Crystal Cathedral). Here is how he approaches church growth paths to success:
Accessibility: you must have a clear road to your church. If the masses are to come, they cannot be hindered by any bumps along the way.
Surplus Parking: just like a shopping center, if you want visitors there must be space and ease of access.
A Wide Range of Programs: just like a shopping center or grocery store, you need a wide variety of goods for old and young, for new and old, so that you can find what you are searching for – hence a small church would not be well-suited for success.
Service Department: the church needs to be a hub where the clergy are training the laity to do the work of ministry
Visibility: the church must advertise, and of course the pinnacle of advertisement is going to the TV program.
Schuller was impressed by the success of the strip malls and so he modeled his church growth patterns after these retail businesses. One thing that you will notice is that some of these ideas are more or less biblical, more or less common sense, or more or less true observations of how people work. So the problem here is not any individual principle. Nor is it the method as a whole. Certainly, churches should try to grow and expand according to the Great Commission. So what is the problem?
It is interesting that the model for the church becomes a retail business. Suppose a high-functioning father decided to take an executive approach (like at Apple) and applied it to his family. This might yield some effective results. It might have key insights. But the problem here is that the model is wrong. The church exists as its own institution under Christ himself. So the family exists in the created order, already endowed by meaning from God. The experts, the marketeers, the executives are not trying to create a church or a family, but a profitable business. And this means that all kinds of wrong assumptions will enter into the method, shape the church, and distort the very institution that the model is trying to advance. The pastor no longer is a counselor of souls and servant of the Lord Jesus in proclaiming the forgiveness of sins and expositing Scripture – he is instead a salesman, trying to convince you to buy eternal life, trying to mould his message so it reaches the felt needs of the customer.
5) popular religion, as we should expect, is simplified. Certain technologies especially emphasize this point. For example, twitter requires short pithy sayings, reducing the discipline of theological rigor to a soundbite. TV is a spectator technology, removing the active participation of the congregation as they sit, stand, sing, and pray together. A blog or book of podcast is word-centric, you cannot sit and eat bread and drink wine with these people. I already mentioned, but it is also depersonalized, even proffessionalized, or, nowadays, AI-ified so that the common human quirks and defects are sanded off.
September 28, 2022
I recently picked up “By What Authority: The Rise of Personality Cults in American Christianity,” by Richard Quebedaux (Harper & Row, 1982) at a local used bookstore, and read it. I bought it because I feel Christianity today is at the mercy of big churches and celebrity pastors. I was intrigued that someone was talking about this back in 1982. I also recognized the author’s name from some books I had at one time (but never read) about the charismatic movement ("The New Charismatics") and about up and coming evangelicals ("The Young Evangelicals"). The author always struck me as someone who was aware of trends in conservative Christianity, and I thought the book might hold some insights that could be informative today. I was also intrigued to see what the author might have seen happening 40 years ago.
It turns out the book is pretty prescient. Although it's primarily about TV preachers and their ministries, many of whom were later discredited, the book still resonates. One of the things he looks at is the impact TV preachers and ministries were having on local churches and their pastors. As I read the book I could see a link between the ways he described the TV celebrity preachers in the book and the megachurches and their pastors today; and I also saw a link with today’s internet church.
Quebedeaux talks at length about the loss of authority in Western and American society, and specifically in Christianity. His thesis is that as Christian leaders lost a sense of authority and influence based on their position or office, all they had left to rely on to influence people was their own personal power and abilities. Quebedeaux says that in the void left by the loss of authority, and with the advent of mass communications and the media, three types of leaders have emerged: Celebrity leaders, pragmatic leaders, and heroic leaders.
Celebrity leaders are people who become respected as leaders simply because they're famous. These would be actors, entertainers, athletes, successful businessmen, and other famous people who become Christians and who then speak out about their faith and are listened to by the public simply because they are known or successful. These leaders exert an outsized influence simply because in today’s climate when authority has diminished, people are respected and admired more for their proven success in some field.
Pragmatic leaders have become famous or known as leaders because of their success in church or ministry leadership--pastors who succeed in growing their churches, for example. These are leaders who have devised methods which have proven over time that they work and are successful. These leaders’ authority is dependent on their effectiveness.
Heroic leaders are charismatic by nature, not in the Pentecostal sense but in terms of having a charismatic personality. These are especially gifted leaders whose following is built on the sheer force of their personalities and their unique abilities.
The author also talks about how conservative Christian leaders usually derive a certain amount of authority from emphasizing the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, and preaching from the Bible as such. Pastors who are known for preaching well in this way are often able to develop a large following because of it (that’s more my interpretation of what Quebedeaux is saying than anything he says overtly).
The author says the problem with the celebrity and pragmatic approaches to Christian leadership is they're very dependent on giving people what they want. This reduces the level to which leaders are able to challenge their followers and creates a great deal of superficiality in the modern Christianity. Quebedeaux says this sort of Christianity encourages self-centeredness and self-absorption, when in fact Scripture calls us to self-sacrifice. In the end, Quebedeaux says what the modern church needs is heroic leaders (especially gifted or charismatic leaders, as defined above) who by the sheer power of their personalities serve as examples of servanthood and self-sacrifice, who in turn call their followers to lives of service and self-sacrifice as well.
I felt there was a lot of truth Quebedeaux's arguments, and that much of what he said still applies today. It does seem that leadership in today’s church, with its megachurches and celebrity pastors, is defined primarily by pragmatic effectiveness. Those pastors who exert the most influence are those who succeed in making their churches grow significantly. Colossal churches gain the attention of everyone. I think of the example of Church of the Highlands here in Alabama, pastored by Chris Hodges, with its 20 campuses across the state and its 50,000+ members. The church has become known for its effectiveness at growing and bringing in new people, and starting new campuses that explode with growth, as well as the way the church mobilizes thousands of volunteers for ministries of service to the community. Highlands and Hodges have become known because they’ve succeeded, and they’ve succeeded because they’ve been effective.
In today’s church, vision and the ability to carry it out determines which pastors will rise to the top and which churches will become the most well-known. Ironically, leadership these days is survival of the fittest in an extremely competitive environment. The most successful win, and those who can’t cut it, those who can’t compete, are left in obscurity.
So it does seem that church leadership today is very dependent on celebrity, on pragmatic ability and effectiveness, and on charismatic personalities, just as Quebedeaux described—and even more so than when he wrote in the early 1980s. I’m not sure the heroic leaders have emerged as he hoped, though—those who will challenge their followers to self-sacrifice and service rather than to self-absorption. One might argue that some of the most successful megachurches have large service ministries that do just that. But how much do today’s megachurches still have to cater to people’s feelings and desires in order to attract members?
One important thing I felt was lacking from this book is that Quebedeaux seems to look at everything through the lens of naturalism, focusing only on what individuals can accomplish in their own power. There's little talk of leaders receiving guidance from God (except in a cynical way which seems to assume that any claims to actual guidance by God are suspect) or relying on the supernatural power of God. It's as if the author is unable to imagine leaders actually depending on God's power and experiencing the benefits of His power and guidance.
After reading the book I became curious about whatever became of Richard Quebedeaux. A Google search turned up little. This book seems to have been his last, and there's not much mention of him after that time. It's as if he just dropped out of sight. I did find one speech online which he had delivered to a gathering of the Unification Church (i.e., the Moonies), which seemed to indicate that at some point he had joined their movement. If that's the case then it may explain why he disappeared. I imagine he would've lost all credibility after joining the Moonies. I do wonder what became of him, though.
It turns out the book is pretty prescient. Although it's primarily about TV preachers and their ministries, many of whom were later discredited, the book still resonates. One of the things he looks at is the impact TV preachers and ministries were having on local churches and their pastors. As I read the book I could see a link between the ways he described the TV celebrity preachers in the book and the megachurches and their pastors today; and I also saw a link with today’s internet church.
Quebedeaux talks at length about the loss of authority in Western and American society, and specifically in Christianity. His thesis is that as Christian leaders lost a sense of authority and influence based on their position or office, all they had left to rely on to influence people was their own personal power and abilities. Quebedeaux says that in the void left by the loss of authority, and with the advent of mass communications and the media, three types of leaders have emerged: Celebrity leaders, pragmatic leaders, and heroic leaders.
Celebrity leaders are people who become respected as leaders simply because they're famous. These would be actors, entertainers, athletes, successful businessmen, and other famous people who become Christians and who then speak out about their faith and are listened to by the public simply because they are known or successful. These leaders exert an outsized influence simply because in today’s climate when authority has diminished, people are respected and admired more for their proven success in some field.
Pragmatic leaders have become famous or known as leaders because of their success in church or ministry leadership--pastors who succeed in growing their churches, for example. These are leaders who have devised methods which have proven over time that they work and are successful. These leaders’ authority is dependent on their effectiveness.
Heroic leaders are charismatic by nature, not in the Pentecostal sense but in terms of having a charismatic personality. These are especially gifted leaders whose following is built on the sheer force of their personalities and their unique abilities.
The author also talks about how conservative Christian leaders usually derive a certain amount of authority from emphasizing the authority and inerrancy of Scripture, and preaching from the Bible as such. Pastors who are known for preaching well in this way are often able to develop a large following because of it (that’s more my interpretation of what Quebedeaux is saying than anything he says overtly).
The author says the problem with the celebrity and pragmatic approaches to Christian leadership is they're very dependent on giving people what they want. This reduces the level to which leaders are able to challenge their followers and creates a great deal of superficiality in the modern Christianity. Quebedeaux says this sort of Christianity encourages self-centeredness and self-absorption, when in fact Scripture calls us to self-sacrifice. In the end, Quebedeaux says what the modern church needs is heroic leaders (especially gifted or charismatic leaders, as defined above) who by the sheer power of their personalities serve as examples of servanthood and self-sacrifice, who in turn call their followers to lives of service and self-sacrifice as well.
I felt there was a lot of truth Quebedeaux's arguments, and that much of what he said still applies today. It does seem that leadership in today’s church, with its megachurches and celebrity pastors, is defined primarily by pragmatic effectiveness. Those pastors who exert the most influence are those who succeed in making their churches grow significantly. Colossal churches gain the attention of everyone. I think of the example of Church of the Highlands here in Alabama, pastored by Chris Hodges, with its 20 campuses across the state and its 50,000+ members. The church has become known for its effectiveness at growing and bringing in new people, and starting new campuses that explode with growth, as well as the way the church mobilizes thousands of volunteers for ministries of service to the community. Highlands and Hodges have become known because they’ve succeeded, and they’ve succeeded because they’ve been effective.
In today’s church, vision and the ability to carry it out determines which pastors will rise to the top and which churches will become the most well-known. Ironically, leadership these days is survival of the fittest in an extremely competitive environment. The most successful win, and those who can’t cut it, those who can’t compete, are left in obscurity.
So it does seem that church leadership today is very dependent on celebrity, on pragmatic ability and effectiveness, and on charismatic personalities, just as Quebedeaux described—and even more so than when he wrote in the early 1980s. I’m not sure the heroic leaders have emerged as he hoped, though—those who will challenge their followers to self-sacrifice and service rather than to self-absorption. One might argue that some of the most successful megachurches have large service ministries that do just that. But how much do today’s megachurches still have to cater to people’s feelings and desires in order to attract members?
One important thing I felt was lacking from this book is that Quebedeaux seems to look at everything through the lens of naturalism, focusing only on what individuals can accomplish in their own power. There's little talk of leaders receiving guidance from God (except in a cynical way which seems to assume that any claims to actual guidance by God are suspect) or relying on the supernatural power of God. It's as if the author is unable to imagine leaders actually depending on God's power and experiencing the benefits of His power and guidance.
After reading the book I became curious about whatever became of Richard Quebedeaux. A Google search turned up little. This book seems to have been his last, and there's not much mention of him after that time. It's as if he just dropped out of sight. I did find one speech online which he had delivered to a gathering of the Unification Church (i.e., the Moonies), which seemed to indicate that at some point he had joined their movement. If that's the case then it may explain why he disappeared. I imagine he would've lost all credibility after joining the Moonies. I do wonder what became of him, though.
September 9, 2017
Now an old book but worth picking up for the closing chapters.
"Because the very foundations of American society, including the family, are crumbling, we MUST seek and find strong leaders. But we need a new kind of leader—beyond the celebrity, beyond the pragmatist—to show us the way to the abundant life, the food life that God originally intended for his children and still longs for us to have..
"No medium or method of conveying the Christian gospel can meet people’s basic needs for recognition, involvement, worthiness, growth, and indeed salvation itself without the loving give and take of person-to-person interaction over a long period of time. This is what community really means, and this is exactly where popular religion and its leaders are not successful.
"In a secular society, in a world where homelessness is the norm, the only way religion can really be “successful” is to provide a home for the homeless—a family that includes not must my kind of people, but God’s kind of people, who love him with everything they have, and who love their neighbor as much as they love themselves. The church does need to become God’s ideal family, both in word and indeed. And its leaders will have to be heroic leaders ho really live and exemplify the life they preach and teach, whose authority is recognized in their nobility, in their concrete modeling of the love of God, the only force that can save and transform a world plagued with the consequences of sin."
Richard Quebedeaux, 1982
"Because the very foundations of American society, including the family, are crumbling, we MUST seek and find strong leaders. But we need a new kind of leader—beyond the celebrity, beyond the pragmatist—to show us the way to the abundant life, the food life that God originally intended for his children and still longs for us to have..
"No medium or method of conveying the Christian gospel can meet people’s basic needs for recognition, involvement, worthiness, growth, and indeed salvation itself without the loving give and take of person-to-person interaction over a long period of time. This is what community really means, and this is exactly where popular religion and its leaders are not successful.
"In a secular society, in a world where homelessness is the norm, the only way religion can really be “successful” is to provide a home for the homeless—a family that includes not must my kind of people, but God’s kind of people, who love him with everything they have, and who love their neighbor as much as they love themselves. The church does need to become God’s ideal family, both in word and indeed. And its leaders will have to be heroic leaders ho really live and exemplify the life they preach and teach, whose authority is recognized in their nobility, in their concrete modeling of the love of God, the only force that can save and transform a world plagued with the consequences of sin."
Richard Quebedeaux, 1982
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews