The rise of non-denominationalism
Celebrities, Publishing, and Sunday School
On Monday, religion data guru Ryan Burge’s SubStack was titled “The Future of American Christianity in Non-Denominational.” He argues that the rise of non-denominationalism is the second largest story in contemporary religion (the Nones are the largest story). One of the graphs he shares contrasts the percentage of individuals who identify as nondenominational1 with those claiming identification with two of the larger Protestant denominations: Southern Baptists and United Methodists.
The non-denoms go from about 6% of Protestants in 1985 to 22% in 2018. Ryan argues that this is in part a reflection of larger anti-institutional trends:
There are mountains of more ink that can be spilled over the rise of non-denominational Christianity. I think it’s probably the most visible manifestation of how American society, and by extension American religion has changed so dramatically in the last two decades. We used to be a nation of institutions. The government, unions, and religious denominations were held in high regard by the average American.
Now, American society is largely bottom up. It’s not institutions that run the show, it’s individuals. Society has demolished the gatekeepers. Social media allows anyone with an internet connection to build a following in the tens of thousands in mere days.
Warning: This is the part of the newsletter where you get reflections from the old retired guy reminiscing about earlier days.
While I agree with Ryan regarding the larger sociological trends leading to declining trust in institutions of all forms, I found myself thinking of some shifts within the religious world in general and evangelicalism in particular that contributed to these changes. Specifically, I’m thinking about the dominance of Christian Radio, the rise in evangelical publishing, and our focus on celebrity pastors.
Back when I was young (see, you knew that was coming), even small denominations maintained their own publishing units. These put out Sunday School material (known as “the quarterly” and books written for consumption by those inside the denomination. There were generally loss-leaders but seen as important in the eyes of denominational leaders.
In an era of outreach to those outside the denomination (birth rates weren’t going to produce desired growth), there was an interest in connecting with new people. One way to do that was to find resources produced by (or on behalf of) national figures with radio ministries.
Those radio ministries had exploded across the AM dial, thanks to the entrepreneurship of Stewart Jepperson of Salem Media. Jepperson died last week at the age of 86. But he was responsible for building a nationwide system of syndicated speakers — a pattern that eventually extended to right-wing political talk radio.2
I don’t remember what year it was, but somewhere back there we switched our Sunday School material to discussing books by Chuck Swindoll. He was congenial on his broadcasts and his books managed to demonstrate the same. Between his series of sermons and the radio program, it was fairly easy for his staff to crank out new books on a regular basis.
Daniel Vaca’s excellent Evangelicals Incorporated; Books and the Business of Religion in America from 2019 documents the history of modern Christian publishing. Books from nationally known figures were showing up, not just in Christian Bookstores but in your local Walmart. Suddenly, everyday folks knew who these figures were. Their books sold well, so publishers kept producing more.
Those small denominational presses simply couldn’t keep up. Denominations looking at their bottom lines eliminated their publication house and outsourced any publishing they did — which reached a comparably small audience.
Katelyn Beatty shows the dynamics of this celebrity-writes-books-enhancing-celebrity (and making money) process in her 2022 Celebrities for Jesus. As she writes:
We feel connected to the names, faces, and voices on our screens — even though the connection is ultimately a projection of a self rather than a true self. Mass media gives us the illusion of intimacy with famous people we follow and admire.
The celebrity speaker-author-broadcaster seems like someone we know. Or, at least, we admire their celebrity-ness. They seemed to be great communicators and their books sold a lot. How could that be bad?
I’ve long argued that one of the contributing factors to the move to non-denominationalism that Ryan Burge describes was a kind of theological homogenization that occurred in the late 20th and early 21st Century. Ryan opens his piece with a stab at the one-word church names that don’t identify religious family in any way.3 But the geographic and church mobility of recent years had brought together people from a variety of theological traditions (and no tradition at all).
Here’s an example of that homogenization. In the early 2000s, we were attending a mid-sized Nazarene Church. Leading up to Easter one year, the leadership determined that we should all be in small groups and study Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. Warren was then the senior pastor of Saddleback Church4 in Orange County, CA. He and Saddleback were part of the Southern Baptist Church5. Purpose Driven Life is rife with certain theological assumptions that align with the Southern Baptists. Needless to say, those theological positions didn’t share a lot in common with a Wesleyan-Holiness denomination.6 We studied it anyway. And in so doing, got a little closer to Generic Evangelicalism.
The rise of non-denoms isn’t surprising given these larger social trends. Identification with the pastor (as Katelyn documents) or “the teachings” (as Jennifer McKinney documents in her book on Driscoll and Mars Hill) seems more important that the affiliation of the congregation. In fact, I would wager that many of those identifying as non-denoms in Ryan’s chart simply don’t know that their “Elevate” church has a denominational connection.
This big-name-celebrity-consumerism opens the door for people to create theology in their own image. That’s part of what’s going on with the alignment of Christian Nationalism and Evangelical religion. When there is a theological void, something else will rush in to fill the space.7
By the way, here’s a plug for Andrew Whitehead’s forthcoming American Idolatry which comes out on August 15th. Andrew is co-author with Sam Perry of Taking America Back for God and turns his attention from the research data to the theological implications of Christian Nationalism. I pre-ordered mine in February and can’t wait for it to show up on the porch.
Including former President Donald Trump who used to identify as Presbyterian and now says he’s non-denominational. But he’s not a fan of institutions anyway.
On The Media had a great series on Salem Media’s story earlier this year. It’s well worth the listen.
Confession: I’m a member of Belong Church although anyone attending will quickly learn that we are UMC. We just finished a four week sermon series on the Wesleyan Quadrilateral!
My favorite Saddleback story comes from a book Robert Putman wrote (not that one). He and his co-author learned that there were 152 people on the mountain-biking group at Saddleback.
Until this summer when the SBC removed them for letting women preach.
I tried to argue this point to the leadership but couldn’t get anyone to budge.
That’s scriptural!
John, one other factor in the last 40? or maybe even 50? years was the growth of the CCM music scene, which added significantly to the homogenization of "Christian evangelical culture." I once heard a major "artist" say in a small group something to the effect of, "Yeah, we've learned not stray far from a very generic [i.e., not at all denominational!! or distinctively group-oriented] message in our song-writing. The road to success is to be generic." That is both disturbing and also symptomatic of much of what happened with CCM and also, I'd say, with the "worship music" genre. Music has power.
I’ve been thinking this sort of thing for a while, though I called it theological levelling rather than theological homogenisation (both terms are good think). I think this is partly just a part of being in a much more interconnected world with greater reach of media and greater interaction between people of different backgrounds. Because, especially historically but still today, churches are not just theologically situated but also geographically and culturally situated. But if those boundaries blur with increased interconnection then theology may also blur. I also wonder if it’s in response to the rise of the nones. In a culture, as it was more so in the past (at least nominally), where most people are Christian on some level, differences between Christians and denominations are more relevant. But as the proportion of people who are non-religious rises, the difference between, say, a Southern Baptist and a Methodist are less than between them and a non-religious person, such that if you want to bring more nones back to religion, you’re gonna play down the differences between denominations.
I also think social change can be a major factor. I’m British and I grew up in an evangelical Anglican Church, before going to a Baptist church for a couple of years as a teenager before returning to my home Anglican Church. And whilst I think I recognised differences between my Anglican and Baptist church, partly in culture (e.g: style of worship) and structure, I don’t think I saw them as that different. In contrast however, my grandparents were Methodists, and they always saw themselves as distinctly “non-conformist” - a term used to describe (largely evangelical) non-Anglican Protestant groups in the UK. But no one really says “non-conformist” anymore. And I don’t think this has just been a matter of theological levelling. Though that’s defo a part of it (as both a cause and a symptom), I think a big part of it has been the decreased social dominance of Anglicanism in the UK, largely as a result of the increase of the nones, and in tandem with theological levelling.
What I also find interesting though is that I think whilst theology has become much less of a dividing line between evangelical groups, I think social issues has become much more of a dividing line. Many denominational splits in the last couple of decades have been in response not to differences of theology (though they’re often theological issues aswell in a sense), but on social issues, like LGBT issues, and women’s ordination. I think that reflects broader polarisation in our society.