America is Full of Churches

Wait - is that a real thing in America? I always thought it was some kind of slang for a bra that Dean Wareham had made up.

Six Flags Over Jesus is insane. Is it the biggest in the state?

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hstencil, I'll see your "Six Flags over Jesus" and raise you a Baptist City , which is about a mile away from me. They claim 100,000 members. Every weekend, they come in by the busload. And none of them live in Hammond - it's a Catholic / Jewish / Greek Orthodox town. Jack Hyles (RIP) was really famous - he has loads of tapes.

I used to have this great First Baptist shirt with a picture of the devil on it.

The thing I love that's being discussed here is the Great U.S. Church Architecture Shift of the Nineteen Eighties! Before some point -- I might be wrong about the dates, but I'm sensing 80s -- most of the churches being built, in suburbs and small towns and such, were sort of modest in a traditionally Protestant way: pretty simple stone or even brick buildings, some nice stained glass and a high spire, something that looked nice and nodded to old European church architecture but didn't make a big show of itself. In plenty of places they had modern touches as well, especially for the sort of churches that had lots of meeting spaces or hosted youth activities and things like that -- there'd be a touch of conference center about them, but this was always kept in check out of a sort of embarrassment, because the central impulse was a simple Protestant church and no one wanted that overshadowed by a big businesslike addition.

But then came the real takeover of this New American Protestantism or whatever we want to call it -- the Born Again and slightly more fundamentalist Protestantism, which is basically deliberately new: it's non-historical and non-theological, all about the literal Bible and the "personal relationship with Jesus" instead of any traditional notion of a church. And so church architecture was basically Born Again! Suddenly there was no impulse toward European old-school church structure and no impulse toward modesty: these churches started erecting these huge modernist buildings that look like crosses between hip museums, malls, big-city convention centers, and the Sydney Opera House, all gleamy interesting glass and windows and big dramatic slopes and spires. (Okay, the "suddenly" is a bit much, because the modernist-church impulse crept in pretty slowly along different levels: it was just the explosion of more fundamentalist churches that really blew it up from a few Methodists with cool buildings to serious sprawling mall-like things.) Half of these churches have sound and light systems inside that you'd expect to see packed up on the U2 tour jet or something.

Which is a great example of basically social architecture, because by creating these lavish things, especially in suburbs and towns -- and, not coincidentally, by flaunting the church's resources in building them -- the church actually does make itself important, or at least a dominating facet of life in that location.

(Sorry, I don't know why I wrote all that.)

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pup tent

Space Mountain: Treating That Weird Stomach-Coming-Up-Through-Throat Feeling As A Text
Snack bars serve Ramen, Beer, Red Bull, and Organic Vegan Empanadas
Very tall people who nonetheless "sympathize with the short" picket the rides with "you must be this tall to board" signs.
"Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse" -> "Europe and the 'New World': an interactive mixed-media exploration of the Man/Nature dichotomy and transgressive aqueducts."
Accidental near-intimate contact with strangers in 'House of Bouncy Floors' -> "House of Sophomore Year At Smith"

pup tent in action

We are a Bible believing, Fundamentalist, Independent Baptist Church. We are 125,000 members strong. Our Church Campus is located in Freehold, Iowa and rests on 35 acres of some of the most beautiful country you'd ever care to set your eyes upon. Our church holds 23 paid pastors, 124 paid deacons, 343 full time staff members, LCA (Landover Christian Academy), LCU (Landover Christian University), 12 fully equipped chapels, Four 2,000 seat sanctuaries, Two 5,000 seat main sanctuaries, the world's largest Christian Mall, a Christian Amusement Park (Landover Bible Theme Park and Red Sea World), A PGA 18 Hole Golf Course, 3 Fitness Centers, 4 Olympic sized swimming pools, Landover Village, Landover Towers, Landover Retirement Community, Center For 2 Churches On Every City Block Foundation, Leviticus Landing (A Gated Christian Community), Exodus Acres (Silver Gated Community), 27 Developments, Landover All Purpose Multi-Temple, Spa and Resort Center, Fire Department, 100,000 seat amphitheater, 12 Television studios, 2 radio stations, A Christian Circus Camp, Retreat Center for Republican Candidates, 3 Corporate Christian Office Parks, hot springs, 8 cemeteries, and 243 fully certified Christian police officers. "

'Obviously'? This doesn't ring true to me at all. Other countries with (until recently at least) very high churchgoing rates were the Catholic countries of Europe (Ireland had a phenomenally high mass attendance rate). Little diversity there. Whereas the UK has all the major world religion's 'ethnic groups' well represented (in major cities, at least) and we're generally pretty meh about organised religion. OK, so the Church of England is still 'the main' Christian denomination, but still. I don't think this is nearly as uncontroversial an explanation as you think it is.

Put it this way: the "national identity" of the UK as Anglican was not really in question for quite a long time. The religious identity of the U.S. has never really been that settled, particularly once its generally-Protestant nature had to deal with loads and loads of Catholic immigrants. I think this -- the sense that these affiliations matter, and also the desire to use some base-level concept of faith in anything, as a whole, as a way of connecting up the diversity of Americans, a way of pretending that at least we all share this -- is one of a great number of things that has kept religion important in our public life.

That said, I've not read nearly enough on this sort of thing to have loads of faith in that theory.

Parishoners are urged to report Catholics (Evil Doers) to local authorities immediately. "It is our duty as True Christian™ Americans to get these idol-worshipping, ring-kissing, hippies on a boat back to Italy before May.

Okay, that was sort of made up for by the Spongebob Squarepants "if you turn his face upside-down it looks like a penis" picture, if only because it warns that you have to be 18 and "saved" to move your mouse over it and see the penis. (Also they were too unimaginative to notice that his pupils should be nipples, meaning his eyeballs would be breasts that the nose-dick is between, not giant balls. Is this a joke, by the way?)

This is the big church in Liverpool. I think its beautiful. My mum's played the organ there for a service.

Does wanting to visit the world's largest Christian Mall, a Christian Amusement Park (Landover Bible Theme Park and Red Sea World) ect. make me Jeanne Baudrillard? I'm just curious about the variety of shops and products that fill the mall - and who records stats on the world's largest Christian...stuff anyway?

God's favourite word is "Come Unto Me"

"I'll Be Back" - Jesus

BETHLEHEM IS WHERE GOD KISSED EARTH'S DIRTY FACE

A memory: my first time in New York, the guy I was staying with insisted on pointing out to me what was the oldest church in NYC/state/East Coast/America/whatever, and I was able to say truthfully "Hey, I grew up in a house older than that!"

This is a phenomenom I hadn't ever noticed until you pointed it out; but it's entirely on point. I can see evidence of this in my own town; in downtown Lex, there are churches built on the old-Protestant throwback-to-medieval style structural formula (stone, stained glass, chapel, etc), and in the developed-during-or-post-80s outer areas of town, they take on the more Social Gathering Place + Occasional Worship Center modernized motif. Quite a good post, sir.

Only because developers can't yet find an adequate excuse to knock them down.

(hearing gasps of "ooh, blasphemy!" off in the distance...)