Megachurches have primed Christian America for authoritarian rule, and have contributed to the collapse of republican virtues.
My church is very much not a megachurch. We're a little community church, and thriving as a small church pastor requires letting go of the idea that you have more authority than your lay leadership. Formal authority is meaningless in the little church. What matters is care, relationship, and a willingness to be discipled by the Christians around you...and that includes pastors actually listening to and learning from the gifts and witnesses of their co-workers in Christ.
My church is also Presbyterian. Being Presbyterian means a bunch of different things, but on a practical and functional level, it means that the beating heart of the church is lay leadership. The Elders who are elected into leadership of a Presbyterian congregation make that church what it is. My task, as a pastor and Presbyterian Teaching Elder, is to proclaim the Word, administer sacraments, and support my fellow Elders as they guide the church. I am, to use the small "c" catholic ideal for the soul in the leadership, a servus servorum dei -- a servant of the servants of God.
I ain't the one in charge. That's not to say my role isn't important to the well-being of the congregation. But I am not the "unitary executive" of my congregation.
That has always been the Presbyterian vision. It was so fiercely a part of Presbyterian identity that was a potent source of radically antimonarchist sentiment. Presbyterians, back when we were a significant force in American life, were always the foes of kings and tyrants, those who would deny power to the people and claim it all for themselves.
There's a reason the American Revolution was called "The Presbyterian Rebellion" by the supporters of King George. For Presbyterian pastors who forget this truth, and imagine they can rule their churches like a king or CEO, well, you're gonna get reminded of that real danged quick.
But the Presbyterian age is waning.
Our numbers are in decline, and not just in my withering branch of the tradition. Taken as a whole, the Presbyterian tide has ebbed in America. Taken all together, liberal and conservative flavors combined, we are less than half of the four million total souls who considered themselves Presbyterian at the midpoint of the last century.
In our place have risen nondenominational corporate churches, ones where the pastor is conceptualized a a CEO. Those leaders are explicitly entrepreneurial, and they quickly become the central focus of the life and the mission of their churches.
Many of these churches do the good work that their scale enables, and many of those pastors work hard to maintain a humble servant heart.
But.
But many do not, and following the Face on the Jumbotron can become profoundly dangerous to the soul of the church. Driven by the More is More ethic, Pastors devolve into celebrity influencers, chasing more and more followers and more and more influence. They become the sole authority, the whole power, and the source of all truth. They choose their staff and their board. Congregants in such gatherings become pastor-focused, not Christ focused, trapped in a parasocial relationship with a single charismatic authority.
This cultic enthrallment is dangerous for personal discipleship, and is just as dangerous for the spiritual integrity of the Pastor in the High Pulpit. As Karl Vaters put it in his excellent DESIZING THE CHURCH,
You cannot build your brand and develop your spiritual maturity at the same time. They are heading in different directions. That doesn't mean you can't promote your church, an event, or a ministry. But promoting ministry for the betterment of others is very different from promoting your identity for the glorification of self. (DESIZING, p. 84)
From that, it's not hard to see how this now dominant model of church life has impacted the political predilections of American Christians. We have been trained to see authority as vested in a single figure, one who is centered as the source of all authority.
And just as the power of bishops and cardinals once affirmed the divine right of kings, so now the power of the CEO pastor and the Christian celebrity influencer "blesses" a new breed of authoritarian.
With that expectation reinforced from the heart of a politically compromised faith, the people cry for a king, and AmeriChrist, Inc. is all too happy to oblige.
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