Market-Driven Neo-Liberalism and the Rise of Mega-Churches

My favorite non-fiction book of 2024 is historian Gary Gerstle’s The Rise and Fall of the Neo-Liberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era. It’s a terrific book, which I strongly recommend.

Gerstle explores neo-liberalism’s roots in post-WWII Europe. While starting there, neo-liberalism came to its fullest realization in the U.S., in the period from the 1970s through 2010. A lot of ground work was laid in the 1960s and ’70s. That came to fruition in the 1980s with the Reagan years. The Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations all accepted the basics of neo-liberalism, with Clinton taking it further, in many ways, than Reagan. The younger Bush pushed neo-liberalism in foreign affairs (spread democracy and free markets), while Obama embodied neo-liberal cosmopolitanism.

So what is “neo-liberalism”? The heart of it is the primacy of the market, along with a parallel reduction in government regulation (and trust in the wisdom of government). Markets must be as open and as dynamic as possible to let them generate growth and prosperity as fast as possible — without government oversight or interference. Government did have a role, but a limited one: to preserve order and stability so that markets, corporations, and investors had needed security and predictability to do their thing.

Beyond the emphasis on the market as primary, other aspects of neo-liberalism included borders that were open for the free or easy movement of people, jobs, and capital in a global economy. Culturally it meant a high value on competition, individual freedom, entrepreneurialism, and celebrity. The early slogan of Facebook, “Move fast and break things,” catches that ethos.

There’s lots to be said about this order, one that has prevailed for 40 years, and is in many ways still with us. Is there any connection to church world? It occurs to me that the neo-liberal period tracks pretty well with the emergence and ascendency of what we came to know as “the mega-church.” Large, non-denominational churches, located in office park-like settings or alongside freeways, configured like movie theaters, led by faith-driven entrepreneurs, employing new digital technology.

It seems no accident that mega-churches emerged in the neo-liberal era.

The mega-church made churches themselves “market-driven.” The church that grows largest and fastest wins. Bill Hybels, the founder of one of the earliest and, for a time, largest, Willow Creek Church in a Chicago suburb, began by going door-to-door and asking people what they wanted from a church. He assessed the market and built a church that responded to it. Willow Creek was famously “seeker friendly.”

Prior to this, there had been a de-facto religious establishment built around denominations that came from western Europe. It was a controlled market. People were likely to go to the church that their parents or grandparents went to — be it Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist, Episcopalian, Lutheran, or any of a half-dozen more. For the most part these denominations did not encourage entrepreneurs or innovators; they wanted “team players.”

In the post-1960s borders were open as people became much freer about switching churches, denominations, and church-shopping. People were motivated less by a sense of obligation (to history, theology, tradition, or family) and more by personal motivation (what speaks to me, what works for me) in their choice of church or other religious experience. The megas and their entrepreneurial pastors/preachers were ready to respond to the shift from obligation to motivation.

As with neo-liberalism, technological innovation has also been a hand-maiden, if not a driver, of the whole project. By and large, mega-churches were early adopters of digital technology (on-line connecting, data tracking, marketing, screens, videos, lights, popular music, cameras) while the established churches, called “mainline,” were slow and often clumsy in their use of such technologies, if they tried them at all.

And as with the world of the celebrity or “cowboy” CEOs of neo-liberalism, so the mega-church fostered celebrity pastors, with churches built around the personality and charisma of one, almost always, male person.

Now as neo-liberalism has fractured under the press of mistaken foreign adventures, exported jobs, uncontrolled immigration, the Great Recession, and a populist/nationalist backlash, so the megas have struggled. Bill Hybels was found guilty of sexual abuse and affairs. Here in Seattle the once ascendent Mars Hill of Mark Driscoll crashed amid accusations of abuse of authority, and coercion of staff and church members. These stories have become increasingly common in the mega-church world where there isn’t much to check a celebrity pastor/preacher.

Does all this suggest there will be a return to the traditional denominational churches? Probably not. (Not any more than Biden was able to resurrect the New Deal.) Politically, we seem to be in the grasp of a mean-spirited populism. As for the churches, there is disaffiliation (the “Nones”) and disinterest. That’s not the whole story of course. About 20% of denominational churches continue to be healthy and vital, some thriving. But they are the exceptions to the rule. Their success is usually attributable to both gifted clergy and lay leadership, and a fairly clear sense of identity and purpose.

The megas did some things right, but by rendering religion another market-driven experience, something was lost. Almost by definition, religion cannot make the customer king. That job is already taken by a Higher Power.

Will the mega-churches, which rose alongside the neo-liberal order, now follow in its decline? My guess is “yes,” although some form of the phenomenon will be with us for a long time. I don’t think that decline necessarily translates to a return to more traditional, less personality-driven churches. It may just translate to more disillusioned, disconnected people in a society desperately in need of trustworthy connections and institutions.