Book I Am Reading

James K. Wellman, Jr.,Katie E. Corcoran,  Kate J. Stockly,  High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America.   The authors are sociologists,  and the first few chapters are awash in the technical jargon of the field with frequent references to sociologists that every sociologist knows,  and of whom the rest of us have never heard.  

It is not a hostile book.  Along with trying to understand how the megachurch's model influences people to stay and become members, it recognizes that the needs they meet in the lives of people are very real and very productive.   They admit that these megachurches are not just talking Jesus, but engaged in a variety of activities that help people in need in ways that even a secularist would consider useful and socially productive (even if they lean vigorously right and pro-Trump).

I am only partway through the book.   Later sections examine the beliefs and emotional reactions of congregants.   Part III examines the often headline-getting moral failures of pastors of these churches fall into,  and how it often destroys these churches. 

I have been a member of several megachurches or at least megachurches-in-training.  Many of the patterns described in this book were immediately recognizable.  When analyzed sociologically,  how these patterns work are obvious.  There is no implication that these patterns are intentionally manipulative; they satisfy deeply felt human needs and they are straight out of the New Testament. 

All of which is leading to my call to arms: megachurches build incredibly expensive buildings for evangelism and worship.  Watching the public K-12 schools botch everything from reading to economics and history, it is clear that every megachurch should build with the plan to create and run K-12 schools, and subsidized rather heavily.   

Why the subsidy? My wife has taught at a couple of Christian schools.  Even when affiliated with a church (in one case, a megachurch) they are largely, if not entirely,  self-supporting. When you spend $500 a month sending your perfect snowflake to school, you get pretty entitled to call the tune, even when that is neither good educationally nor good for character development.   Also, too many of the parents are at best nominally Christian.  Johnny is at a Christian school in the hope that he will get a better education,  or at least associate with kids more moral than they are.  The results should be obvious. 

If churches subsidize schools heavily,  one irritated parent threatening to pull Johhny out because he did not get an A on an obviously plagiarized paper will not cause administrative brain seize.

What I do not want are schools trapped in Young Earth, dinosaurs on the ark crap.  This does not prepare students for any secular college or even many Christian colleges.  Learn what the world knows well enough that if you need to challenge them on the details, that you do not look like an idiot or a well-trained robot.

I have in mind the Dissenter academies that turned out a couple generations of scientists and engineers in 19th century Britain, when Oxford and Cambridge were Church of England, excluding Dissenters as well as science.  They were stuck in classics, which has a place, but was not quite as relevant as the education that gave Britain engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Bruneel.  Produce a generation of kids who know American history, math (even white math), science, and composition, and America can be reclaimed. Otherwise,  we are ceding the future to the left.  

Hitler observed that it did not matter what older people thought.   His control of the schools would determine what the next generation thought.   You can see the proof all around us: white privilege,  cancelling Dr. Suess (a prominent anti-Fascist, New Dealer, and environmentalist), Coca-Cola telling its workers to be less white.

Robert Browning's Ordinary Men tells the story of a police reserve battalion that participated in the Holocaust following the blitzkrieg invasion of the East.  Those old enough to be educated before Hitler rose to power, were far less enthusiastic about these monstrous crimes.  The Hitler generation had far less difficulty. 

It does not take a megachurch.   Ten small churches of a few hundred could do the job.  First Baptist proves classrooms for K-4, House of Love does 4-8. Covenant Community does classrooms for 9-12.  All the churches provide funding to hire teachers, and subsidize tuition, with a joint school board to administer the whole district.   But this would require churches to put education of children first, not a sanctuary that seats 6000.

Not that anyone listens to me.