How MEGA Eclipsed the ALMIGHTY: Reclaiming the American Megachurch

Abstract

The American Christian church is witnessing a widening rift instigated by Christian Nationalist extremists from a decades-long authoring of toxic political influence seeping into the church. The American Megachurch reflects the political motivations of a capitalist society revolving on success through scale. At best, the architecture does not engage against this religious misuse and, at worst, facilitates some of the behavior. The Ancient Church was counter-formative and radical, yet the megachurch adopts today’s capitalist culture described by the French anthropologist Marc Augé in his work, Non-Place: An Introduction to Supermodernity. This architecture is mega, corporate, and aloof negating identity formation. Visitors to this architecture are subjected “to a gentle form of possession, to which [they] surrender [themselves] with more or less talent or conviction, [they] taste for a while – like anyone, who is possessed – the passive joys of identity-loss, and the more active pleasure of role-playing.” An assembly of similitude breeds false teachings of comfort and alignment. To recapture place and a Christ-centered liturgy and assembly, a new understanding of megachurch architecture is proposed that is counter-formative to its history. The work develops within the megachurch context to reclaim the territory and achieve success through an engaged architecture of temporality and timelessness placed in dialogue with urban interventions of permanent church-led social missions.