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Megachurches in New England

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(page 5 of 7)

Jack Davis, a professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts, says the sense of community experienced by evangelicals in the region is intensified by their relative scarceness. "There's a feeling of being an outsider and a minority," he says, with respect to the dominant Catholic religious presence and general secular culture. At the same time, evangelicals in the Northeast differ from those in other parts of the country because they're less conservative. In general, they identify more with New England culture than with a Southern evangelical one, says Andrew Walsh: "The [cultural and political] evangelical package is unfamiliar to them. Most of them are not active religious-right types. They are, by and large, people who accept religious pluralism and think of religion as private." For this reason, large national denominations have approached the Northeast "gingerly," Walsh says.

The region's younger evangelicals, in particular, tend to hold political views not typically associated with born-again Christianity. When Mike Mancini, who describes himself as pro-choice and unopposed to gay marriage ("It's just a piece of paper to ensure rights," he says), undertook his initial, marathon reading of the Bible, he discovered a mandate for social justice that underscored his own beliefs. "[Social justice] should be a priority of every Christian," he says, "and liberal politics line up with that."

On the national stage, evangelical politics have shifted in recent years. If the old stance zeroed in on individual morality, the new focus seems to be on broader issues: the environment, global poverty, human rights. The environment, and global warming in particular, has received particular attention of late. The Evangelical Climate Initiative, along with a statement signed by 86 church leaders, was released in February 2006, and in March 2008, 44 leading Southern Baptists issued a statement urging that denomination to be more aggressive in its response to environmental issues. Stewardship of the Earth, in Christian parlance, has become a rallying point for those who want a break with the religious right.

At the church level, the trend seems to be to step aside from politics and to focus on the individual, addressing issues like economic hardship and emotional distress in a personal way through hands-on teachings. This people-not-programs approach dovetails with an intention to draw individuals in one by one. As one Web site puts it: "Grace Chapel is an upbeat, energetic place that allows you to be you. Whatever your background, religious or not, wherever you are on your spiritual journey, committed or simply curious--you are welcome at Grace Chapel."

That's not to say that New England's evangelical churches don't proselytize. They do, and sometimes vigorously so--often through outreach by individual members, although the approach tends to be more subtle than the in-your-face witnessing of old. At the corporate level, Grace Chapel will, for example, issue open invitations to its holiday services through newspaper ads or mailed postcards, says Executive Pastor Bill Burke. "We'd rather show what we believe than actively convert," Burke says. "The idea is to invite people in and to be who we are while they're here. We want new members, but we don't want to go about it in a forceful way."

Many modern evangelical churches are modeled on the "seeker church"--among the best known of which are Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, and Bill Hybels' Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. Beyond their perhaps oversimplified image of targeting the unchurched and the spiritually hungry, seeker churches have for 50 years addressed the problems of everyday life while offering Biblically based assistance. In so doing they've blurred distinctions between the secular and the religious. Indeed, in a mission statement that sounds equal parts religion, motivational-speak, and Big Business, the Willow Creek Association (WCA) offers to provide its 12,000 member churches around the world with "life-changing experiences, tools, and innovations" and to assist them in reaching "their full redemptive potential," which translates at least in part to large-scale congregation building.