Megachurch success in the age of radical modernity : an analysis of the role of co-sanctified lexicons in three American cities

Abstract

There has been a sharp decline in Christian church attendance in the past two decades, while at the same time megachurches are growing and thriving. This thesis examines the significant success of three megachurches in the United States: Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, California, and Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Joining the more recent qualitative research of megachurches (survey, case study, and focus-group interviews), the thesis adopts an in-depth qualitative and processual approach to the examination of the success of these three megachurches. The strengths of this approach are contrasted with the quantitative and abstracted approaches of much of the earlier dominant research within the existing literature on megachurches. The qualitative analysis is informed and guided by five general themes that have emerged from the existing academic literature on megachurches: individualism, consumerism, therapeutic comfort, anti-establishment, and cultural relevance. At the empirical heart of the study, the methodological tools of discourse analysis and website analysis are employed to conduct a thorough linguistic analysis of each of the three church websites. The website data upon which the analysis is based was accessed during the years of September 2013 - January 2014 (Lakewood Church), July 2015 (West Angeles Church of God in Christ), and February - April 2016 (Mars Hill Bible Church). The data includes all page links on the main page, and every link within each of the subsequent pages. Essentially, every link was captured and analyzed. This resulted in hundreds of pages for each megachurch. The resulting linguistic ethnography shows that though their social locations, ideologies, and theologies were significantly different from each other, each megachurch's sacred lexicon was permeated by selected aspects of vernacular lexicons to the degree that the vernacular elements had also become part of the sacred. This resulted in co-sanctified lexicons that appeared to function to establish a habitus of safety and security for the megachurch attendees, despite the uneasy liminalities of radical modernity. The combination of theoretical perspective and empirical evidence provides strong grounds for suggesting that the co-sanctified lexicons enabled each megachurch to uniquely thrive, even while their surrounding culture was abandoning formal religious beliefs and practices.

Date of Award	2022
Original language	English