Word: megachurch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Bynum's misfortune coincided with the divorce by an even more popular Pentecostal figure, Paula White, and her co-pastor husband Randy, of the Without Walls International megachurch in Tampa, Fla. Divorce, once a taboo in evangelical culture, is now a fact of life. But the Whites' apparently no-fault parting appeared so matter-of-fact - few details were offered, and neither partner seemed to take a time out from preaching - that some grumbled about the unchristian notion of marriage as a convenience. Then there was the drugs-and-call-boy-abetted exit of marquee-name Pentecostal pastor Ted Haggard...
...First Baptist North Spartanburg church in South Carolina is a theologically conservative success story, a suburban megachurch where 3,000 people have been known to show up for Sunday school. If social issues drive votes anywhere in America, it's around here. Yet Giuliani recently filled the fire station across the highway from First Baptist for a rally at which he was endorsed by the chairman of the county council and the executive director of the state firefighters association, who said, "Rudy Giuliani is the face of the response to 9/11...
...heavily involved in Democratic politics, including former Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile. Brazile, who publicly rebuked John Kerry in 2004 for not having enough blacks on his campaign staff, has spoken warmly of Obama. The Illinois Senator frequently talks with T.D Jakes, a black minister who runs a Texas megachurch and whose sermons are broadcast around the country. Among the circle of advisers on Obama's team are a core of African-Americans who, like Obama, were born after the start of the Civil Rights movement and attended elite colleges. Cassandra Butts, a law school classmate of Obama...
Some of this is already beginning to happen. Megachurch pastors like Rick Warren and T. D. Jakes are wielding their enormous influence to confront AIDS, Third World debt relief, and the genocide in Darfur. Self-described "progressive evangelicals" like Jim Wallis and Tony Campolo are lifting up the biblical injunction to help the poor as a means of mobilizing Christians against budget cuts to social programs and growing inequality. And across the country, individual churches like my own are sponsoring day-care programs, building senior centers, and helping ex-offenders reclaim their lives...
...peculiarly American theology but turbocharged. If Puritanism valued wealth and Benjamin Franklin wrote about doing well by doing good, hard-core Prosperity doctrine, still extremely popular in the hands of pastors like Atlanta megachurch minister Creflo Dollar, reads those Bible verses as a spiritual contract. God will pay back a multiple (often a hundredfold) on offerings by the congregation. "Poor people like Prosperity," says Stephen Prothero, chairman of the religion department at Boston University. "They hear it as aspirant. They hear, 'You can make it too--buy a car, get a job, get wealthy.' It can function as a form...