▼ Report: MegaAmerica, Non-aesthetic zones of new politic
Originally published 02/16/11, as part of society-society.
The megachurch movement is usually thought to have begun in the 1950s. Globally, these large congregations are a significant development in Protestant Christianity. While generally associated with the United States, the phenomenon has spread worldwide. The advent of television in the 1950′s, and the Internet in the 1990′s and 2000′s have been a motivator for mega churches. Megachurch services are often broadcasted.
In the United States, more than half of these large church institutions are non-denominational churches. Those that have ties to a larger body are most often members of the Southern Baptist denomination, which became a separate denomination in 1845 in following a regional split with northern Baptists over the issues of slavery. - [paraphrased; various sources]
Most of the megachurches, even those not associated with
Southern Baptists, share its collision of conservative politics,
mainstream American entertainment, the logic of corporate
architecture and the sense of corporate strategy – all of which
reflects the conservative American political psyche in total.
“Southern Baptist“;
Since the 1940s, the denomination has moved away from its regional identification. While still based in the US South, it has member churches across the United States.
Until 1979 all Baptists used the word “revival” to refer to the power of the Holy Spirit to transform hearts and change lives. Change began within an individual and spread from one person to another. Revival was a spiritual movement, not a political movement. In 1979, Southern Baptists, fundamentalists began twisting the meaning of the word “revival” and used it to talk about the power of a social movement to change the culture. Today, even the revivalist altar call has become a tool of politics. - [paraphrased; various sources]
American Mega Church;
the expression of the aesthetic of corporate America,
military America, disposable America,
expansionist America.
At the gates – a passport check.
We were close to the edge of the road. The church members
drove past without stopping. Parking lot stickers, digital,
register attendance. The technology was a gift from the local
U.S. Air Force base.
The security guard looks at my cds spread across the floor, looks
at my cigarettes in my shirt pocket, winces, then waves us inside.
Some are trapped in the circle.
It is impossible to not live surrounded. But some preserve the
circle, and offer religion to corporations, to political syndicates
and hallucinate the circle itself as a “National” value
worth total war.
We were at the gates of the preservation of what has become
a strong arm of neo-fascism in politics. The American mega
church is built on political blood. Each daily prayer becomes
a small release: the worth of a drop of national expansion.
Most American Christianity now; it’s likeness, is completely
one and the same with the American right-wing. As an image of
a politic in the US, an ideology synonymous with unrestrained
wars of capitalism, American Christianity, a moth, gravitates
to the corporate simulacrum.
In a U.S. megachurch there is, equally, a religious and a
political history. In the aesthetics of the megachurch;
and in its programming; and in its particular form of
expansionist Christianity; is the taste of the blood
of foreign bodies murdered to instill safety and global
dominance.
In many ways the history is drawn to, and often incorporated
by, Southern Baptists, who themselves are an equal mix
of surreal right wing agendas with apocalyptic and divisive
religious impulses that have shaped conservative thought
since the late 1970s.
The American simulacrum has a conservative politic as its
agenda. It is Wal-Mart. It is the decentralized office park.
It is the sport event. It is aluminum and concrete, and
portable, and not even real. A solid building is real,
carved onto space with the intention
of permanence…
…but the megachurch is built on liquid imperialism.
Americans never had a chance to build a solid culture;
now everything is bought;
Everything…
is presented as a reflection of our carfefully crafted consumer
and political desires.
The megachurch is the SUV, the McMansion, the shopping mall….
…the strategy of new malls built every 5 years with new stores,
the blindness as old malls are abandoned but left in tact…..
…the invasion of Iraq, black sites, drones,
…video games, political blindness, false arrogance.
In board rooms where power is turned into decisions and actions,
conservative politics is decorating our reality. The right-wing and
capitalism are expansive together. Both lack a grounding in
aesthetics beyond the American screen of invented pastiche.
Instead, there is a non-aesthetic of American conservative politic.
The screen has a non-aesthetic. A capitalist embrace of simulacrum
is production of more veneer. The American Christian megachurch
is faith in corporate architecture.
