High on God: How Megachurches Won the Heart of America
By James K. Wellman, Katie E. Corcoran & Kate J. Stockly
Oxford University Press, 2020

There are so many ways in which it would be easier on all of us if James Wellman, Katie Corcoran, and Kate Stockly were being cynical or dismissive with the title of their new book, High on God; How Megachurches Won the Heart of America. Readers would be free to indulge in the kind of condescending disregard for weakness that has been a pillar of the American psyche since the Puritans erected it three hundred years ago. But no: these authors mean their title as literally as possible. They see megachurches as quickly-evolving organisms that have “mastered the social ritual methods of charging their congregations with emotional energy and embodied cognitive markers that stimulate intense loyalty and a desire to come back repeatedly to get recharged.” 

“Megachurches,” they insist, “are like drug dealers offering members and nonmembers alike their next hit.” 

This makes it all the more remarkable that High on God manages so successfully to avoid both the oversimplification and the sneering that typically attends contemporary academic discussions of organized religion. Instead, these authors assemble a vast amount of research and ancillary reading in order to present an exhaustive diagnostic of not only the role of megachurches in American society but also the nature of Christianity’s role just in general in the United States in the last half-century. 

It’s a big subject and a growing one. Defined as a church with a weekly attendance over 2000, so-called megachurches are multiplying: there were around 350 in 1990 and over 1600 in 2011. As our authors point out, the largest 10% of churches in the United States are attended by more than 50% of American churchgoers. And the reason is simple: “Megachurches work by meeting the emotional needs of humans.” Working from the basic concepts of Émile Durkheim’s homo duplex, the authors lay out the key elements of that success: a charged, pregnant bodily assembly, conceptual and even physical barriers excluding outsiders, and the creation of a shared emotional mood - all things that megachurches do with the monomaniacal efficiency of big businesses.

On a crucial human level, that big business is providing hope for millions of faithful - and our authors are smart enough, or graceful enough, to take that seriously:

The promise and draw of this ‘hope’ is that these megachurches appear to contribute to and enhance levels of happiness, emotional security, and well-being in their members. It appears that, consciously or not, these people aren’t faking it - the fullness of their joy, their relief, and the apparent profundity of their transformation appears so genuine that something good must be occurring. 

High on God is amazingly penetrating reading, as insightful a look at this weirdly American phenomenon (warts and all - the many, many, many failings of megachurches are at least cursorily examined) as has ever been written. Regardless of where readers fall on the spectrum of their relationship with megachurches, they’re going to learn a great deal in these pages - whether or not they like what they learn.

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.