🙏Undercover at Sunday School ✟

What's going on beneath the Pews

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Part One of this riff was last week, catch up on it HERE.

Part Three on AI and the rise of Silicon Religion coming soon.

In this middle post we will cover:

Why national research is missing what’s happening right now in American religion (and why you might want to get ahead of those lagging reports)

How to parse the differences in the Muddled Middle of Megachurches and separate overlapping presentations from wildly divergent theology.

(10 min read)

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If you’ve been keeping tabs on cultural trends over the past decade you’ve probably heard it repeated like a catechism: religious attendance is down.

The rise of the “Nones” is growing. We’re nearing an end of faith.

If God isn’t dead (yet!), he’s definitely on life support.

The most often cited reference for this fact are the Pew Research Foundation’s findings. They scour the country, crunch the numbers, and report back.

But in the last few years, something else has been happening.

Something that the broad brush strokes, large data sets and sober analyses aren’t cottoning onto. (yet).

Like census data, these kinds of reports always seem to lag a few years behind emerging trends.

So what’s going on right now, beneath the Pews?

As an anthropologist who’s been studying Utopian and visionary movements, cults, and sects for the better part of three decades, I wanted to find out.

So I embarked on an undercover tour of Christian Faith and Belonging in America, circa 2025.

Wanted to check out the full spectrum of belief, from staid Eastern Orthodoxy to the Mega-Church that Texas Governor Rick Perry attended, to a New Age Gurdjieff/Father Thomas Merton church, to a Black Gospel Praise House.

And while our survey isn’t complete, it’s already yielding some fascinating insights and perspectives about what’s bubbling up in pockets of American spirituality.

***

At first I wanted to map this onto a tidy 2x2 chart that would make a McKinsey MBA proud.

Two axes, with four neat buckets to capture everything I was talking about.

Either I’m past my prime and can no longer conjure such things, or there’s more than two axes at play here.

Trialectic, more than dialectic. Which would be appropriate mapping Holy Trinities and such.

So for now, will just map it on a single line from More Traditional to Least Traditional and I’ll try and describe the variations and mutations as we go.

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On the far left (chronologically, not politically, as these are simply the ones who’ve been around the longest) we have the Ultra Traditionalists.

That’s the Pre-Vatican II, Latin Mass arch-Catholics of Opus Dei (and DaVinci Code infamy). These are the folks who gnash their teeth at all efforts to liberalize the Church, and who yearn for the simpler time when (only) men could be priests, and altar boys could be boys.

#omerta

(needless to say, our current Pope, that gay-loving eco-Marxist is NOT on their team. Surprised they haven’t had him whacked by those creepy albino assassins of theirs)

(wrong franchise. The DaVinci code albino baddy was a solo operator)

This is the lot that Vice President JD Vance has thrown in with.

Steve Bannon and Candace Owens too.

Apparently, they have a full time lobbying setup in DC and are working some dark magic behind the scenes. Saving souls, pulling strings. That sort of thing.

And to think, we nearly kept JFK out of office for being a Papist!

#timestheyareachanging

It’s not just MAGA folks bending the knee to Rome.

As Tara Isabella Burton writes in the New York Times, it’s disaffected hipster Millennials too. Rather than seeking a return to ubertraditionalism, these “Weird Christians” are just seeking reprieve from TherapyTok and New Age drivel.

#existentialkink

#thankyouLordmayihaveanother

We’re seeing a similar “ism-schism” in Eastern Orthodoxy.

On the one hand, we have the highly literate aesthetes like Paul Kingsnorth (founder of Dark Mountain Arts Collective and The Abbey of Misrule) who appear drawn to it for its ancient baroque (dare we say, Byzantine) production.

And to be fair, after visiting the Greek isle of Patmos last summer where St. John wrote the Book of Revelations it’s hard not to catch that Orthodox vibe.

The Cave of the Apocalypse, Patmos Greece

The smells and bells, saints and feast days. All the stuff that more modernized faiths have excised because customer surveys said they wanted McSpirituality instead.

Now these traditionalist holdouts, appear to be holding something dear and precious that discerning spiritual customers are yearning for.

But on the other hand, it’s not just the highly cultured that are craving the High Church of the Eastern Orthodox.

It’s the podcast and gun bros of east Texas.

This lot has largely taken over a church near Houston, and they’re stanning for Putin in Ukraine, and a decidedly more muscular Christianity

[the minister] says he stays out of purely political discussions, others in his orbit have used their faith and online megaphones to further the cause of far-right politics. Some of them have found common cause with the Confederacy, fascism, monarchism, and white supremacy.

Some longtime members of their parishes and other Orthodox jurisdictions are alarmed by this shift and have begun to push back.

And many of their antagonists are in Texas, which is home…to a handful of men often referred to as “Ortho Bros”—a loosely connected group with far-right views who are fluent in the languages of social media and podcasting.

Check the Texas Monthly article here

So to sum up our first stop on our tour:

Traditionalist High Church is drawing people these days for all the things it’s always been (structured, ritualistic, patriarchal) and all the things it isn’t (self-centered, soft, woke).

And it’s drawing both disaffected cultural elites, and budding MAGA retro-fascists.

(I’m betting on the bros over the aesthetes in a knife fight).

Here you can note another fork to follow on our meme map: from Ortho Bros who center a muscular Christianity to what Astral Codex’s Scott Alexander calls the Based Post-Christian Vitalists.

Basically the same crowd, just one goes for Jesus and one goes for Ancient Rome.

Translating for GenXers and Boomers:

“Based” means super cool and switched on/Red Pilled. Elon tried to use it, but ipso facto, a GenXer who uses it, isn’t it.

“Post-Christian” means Christian culturally, but no longer seriously bothered with the theology or ethics of it. So, yes to Crusader memes, no to Turn the Other Cheek.

“Vitalist” means really into gladiators, bodybuilding, masculine power. Norse and Aryan adjacent. Not gay. (but kinda)

Everyone's A Based Post-Christian Vitalist Until The Grooming Gangs Show Up

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Next Stop on our tour is what we can call The Muddled Middle.

This makes up the majority of Christian activity and growth these days.

And while Mainline Protestantism, Unitarianism, Quakerism and a whole bunch of middle of the road faiths are struggling, these variants are booming.

They make up three overlapping but crucially distinct sects.

The Fundamentalist MegaChurch. (with offshoots into Theocratic Nationalism) This is who we’ll be reporting on today.

The Prosperity Gospel MegaChurch (looks almost identical in form to their Megachurch neighbors, but with an emphasis on the Self over Service)

The NewAge Conspirituality Crew (same DNA as Prosperity Gospel Church, totally different wrapper)

Let’s take them one at a time:

The Fundamentalist MegaChurch:

Presentation: sleek modern auditoriums. casually dressed preachers (often frumpy dads wearing flannel vs. the slick Hype Priests we’ll get to next week).

All sacred architecture has been reduced to images on the Jumbotron. Lots of stock photos of Sun (Son) rises and mountains.

Shafts of light through clouds.

The occasional backlit cross.

No altar. No sacristy. No nave. No cruciform (churches designed in the shape of the cross).

Just a generic, if nicely appointed auditorium that could as easily host a TED talk, or a real-estate seminar.

***

Over the past decade, we’ve watched as the church at the top of our street has grown exponentially. We finally went to a service last month.

It’s a good example to unpack in some detail.

Over that time they’ve added buildings, cafes, K-3, then K-12 schooling, and sports fields.

They’ve even corralled the local sheriffs’ department to run traffic for them on Sundays and worked the zoning commission to get two additional traffic lights.

#churchandstate

Lately they’ve been buying up other underperforming churches in the area.

(they must be sitting on a nine figure real estate portfolio at this point!).

Now they’re live broadcasting around the world. And hosting overflow seating in the lobbies.

So I was fascinated to see what they had going on operations-wise.

Very smooth, friendly. Greeters in logo’d Praise t shirts out front.

Free coffee baristas in the lobby. Skip Starbucks, get your Holy Ghost caffeination instead!

Text 0302 for newcomers (plus they get front row parking!).

#belongingbeforebelief

A cute little Oscar Meyer Lunchables style communion setup handed out as you enter—a tiny plastic goblet sealed with foil top and bottom. One end holding a thimblefull of wine, the other a crouton of Holy Eucharist.

Inside the plush auditorium, a countdown timer on the lower righthand corner of the Jumbotron. (for some reason, all the megachurches we went to had this).

And then, at the 00:00 mark the whole thing kicks off.

The Jesus Rock.

Oh, the Jesus Rock!

(with an eerily consistent band composition at every church we went to–a guy and a girl with pipes in the middle, lesser singers and kinda chunky momjeans on the wings. Drumkit behind a plexiglass shield. Keyboards back right corner. Every time.)

The band jumps into a three set medley to get the crowd into the spirit of things (this time led by another flannel wearing bro, a bit younger than preacherman).

The lead vocalist aesthetic seems to range from Nickleback scruffy indie, to red-blooded Toby Keith country. The only difference appeared to be #days of facial hair and sneakers vs. cowboy boots.

As a student of peak states, and group dynamics, I’ve written a lot about the power of what Emile Durkheim called “collective effervescence.”

What the Greeks called communitas. What Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called “Group Flow.”

And few techniques of ecstasy (Mircea Eliade’s timeless term) are so powerful as music.

Think back to the cathedrals of Westminster and Notre Dame. Those towering buttresses, stained glass windows and thundering pipe organs.

Those reedy little eunuchs of the choir singing Ave Maria or In the Bleak Midwinter. It’s hard not to feel a little pious under such conditions.

The megachurches offer precisely none of that.

And also, no classic hymns. Dispensing with centuries of profound lyricism and music, there’s no Bach or Handel to speak of.

But a booming soundsystem and fog machines make up for it on the cheap.

One of the churches even handed out earplugs!

Instead, it’s all contemporary “Praise Music” written in the last decade or two.

Smushed to fit into alt-rock, alt-country formats.

With follow-along bouncing ball lyrics projected on the screen behind the singers.

Plodding rhyme schemes you can predict a mile off.

Lots of capitalized personal pronouns–He, Him, His, You.

Testaments to Jesus’ name, power, grace and glory that make Successories posters read like Zen koans.

Leonard Cohen it ain’t.

Not a “Jesus looking down from his lonely wooden tower” or a “broken Hallelujah” in the mix.

But, apparently evocative enough to get some of the congregants into the Spirit of things.

Hands go up in praise and testimony. Even the occasional bible lifted in the air to catch the feels.

(Now, keep in mind, this is a church for the whites).

So all these efforts to really get into the call-and-response “mmmmhhhuh, can I get an Ayyy-men” swing of things feel decidedly stilted.

(made me yearn to get across town to check out the Gospel church, to see this kind of thing done right. The kind of place where Aretha, Whitney and Beyonce cut their teeth).

After the praise rock warmup, the preacher comes out.

Fifty-something flannel dad. Self-deprecating. Making jokes about his wife at the dinner table and how The Lord needed to go easy on him sometimes.

All very friendly.

Harmless, even.

Until he dips into the Acts of the Apostles.

And again, if you were just coasting along on the friendly vibes and basking in the community feel of things, you might miss it.

In outlining how good Apostle Paul was pounding pavement of the Roman world to get the Word out, he points out how the Romans, were in fact, tough but fair in their floggings and punishments.

And since Paul was a Roman citizen, he got out of a lot of tar-and-featherings because of their due process.

But the Jews, you see, practiced crucifixion. This was the most horrible, humiliating and demeaning way to die possible. And they were behind it.

He repeats this several times even though it isn’t the point of his story.

It’s not even historically accurate. (Jews, under Sanhedrin law preferred stonings, hence Jesus’ bit about “he who is without sin, living in glass houses,” etc.)

In point of fact, crucifixion was a classic Roman punishment reserved for the lowest of the low, non citizens, and rebels.

#iamspartacus

But the preacher just weaves this statement in there and leaves it. He can come back and fan the embers of the Christ Killers/Blood Libel memes later, I guess.

Same deal with gender politics.

At one point he’s telling the tale of Job, and how God and Satan made the bet to rock Job’s world and see if he still would stay faithful.

After Satan kills all nine of their children, Job’s understandably grief-stricken wife says “why don’t you give up your God now and die?”

But the minister is having none of it.

Basically saying “can you get a load of this utter bitch???” and then delighting in the fact that after this comment she is never mentioned in the Good Book again.

Holding up that same Good Book, he affirms, “everything you need to know about sexuality and marriage, is right here.”

Which you know, doesn’t seem to bode too well for the uppity women, onanists and sodomites in the mix.

After this slightly problematic sermon, I was ready for the standby rituals of the Church–communion, bible readings and collection plates.

Was not prepared for what comes next.

No bibles in the back of the pews. Everyone has the Bible app on their phones.

No collection plate (given their rampant capital expansion, I’m assuming we’re gonna get a hard sell for donations).

Instead, a QR code on the armrest was all there is!

#applepayisTheWay

And for communion, the pastor instructs everyone to get out those little Oscar Meyer Lunchables goblets we’d been given on the way in.

Pop the foil seal. Slam the thimble of wine. Nibble the cracker and…

Done?

That was it. One thousand people, signed, sealed and Delivered in two minutes flat!

Before I knew it, we were shuffling out the door, and the countdown timer read 1:15:00.

Door to door in a tight 75 minutes.

Brilliant. Easy. Digitally savvy. Socially oriented. Convenient.

But also resting on a bedrock of a strict fundamentalist interpretation of The Word.

And in the same way that the Orthodox Bros praise Jesus but really share more ideological common ground with their “Based, Post-Christian Vitalist” comrades (AKA Bronze Age Pervert and Classical Aryans),

These Fundamentalist Mega Churches actually connect to more extreme versions of faith than their sunny Sunday mornings might suggest.

And the most potent and virulent of those expressions is the New Apostolic Revival/Seven Mountains Mandate folks.

Read The Army of God Comes Out of the Shadows

Like Opus Dei, they have deep inroads into this US administration’s policies via Project 2025, White House prayer breakfasts, and Supreme Court justices.

And they are engaged in a focused, disciplined effort to turn the United States into an explicitly Christian nation state governed by Christian theology and law.

Which might sound comforting to a casual citizen, after we’re losing our kids to Tinder, TikTok and OnlyFans.

But when you scratch the surface, these folks are utter nutters.

Demons and angels are around us.

Spirit possessions common.

The End Times are near.

Donald Trump is a divinely appointed King Cyrus (a morally questionable ruler who nonetheless carried out God’s will).

Omens and portents abound.

Israel is about to usher in the Final Battle. So the more they poke the hornets’ nest, the better.

But despite their fever-dreamed patriotism, they’re actually, profoundly un-American.

Religious tolerance is a cornerstone of the American Experiment.

In the 18th century, the Protestant/Catholic bloodbaths of Europe loomed in everyone’s minds.

So even the political winners didn’t want to enshrine their particular beliefs as the law of the land, lest it stoke bloodshed later.

And the commitment to freedom of worship came to include tolerance for Islam, Hinduism, secularism, even atheism.

(never for Communism though. That one stayed firmly out of bounds)

Separation of Church and State wasn’t just a way to keep the peace. It was a bedrock principle of a pluralist society.

Which all goes to hell if you believe:

a) your Good Book is the infallible word of God

b) anyone who doesn’t believe it burns in hell for eternity

And while the mega church at the end of the street said none of those things on the happy Sunday we showed up, they implied many of them.

This isn’t new.

For at least the last century, that kind of religious fundamentalism has been tolerated, under the broad mandate of “believe what you want to believe, but don’t enforce it on others.”

Your faith, doesn’t trump my rights.

That’s held up remarkably well, all things considered.

But now we’re seeing a sea change where absolute certainty is replacing live and let live humility.

And the fundamentalist churches we’ve been visiting are easing this transition, one Jesus rock anthem, and one snackable communion wafer at a time.

Next Week: we’ll check out the Prosperity Gospel MegaChurches and point out how they look almost identical to the Fundamentalist Churches, but in reality share more in common with the New Age crowd.