Word: megachurches
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...divide between the religious and nonreligious is a wide one - even more so in America, where Christianity and politics are so often intertwined. Atheist Gina Welch wanted to bridge that gap. So she went undercover for two years, joining a megachurch and revealing her nonbeliever status to no one. She eventually became a true part of the community, even going on a mission trip with people she now considers friends. Welch details her journey in a new book, In the Land of Believers: An Outsider's Extraordinary Journey into the Heart of the Evangelical Church. She talked with TIME about...
...behind his lectern, reinforcing key phrases. Hybels' preaching is economical, precise of tone and gesture. Again by custom, he was dressed in black, which accentuated his pale complexion, blue eyes and hair, once Dutch-boy blond but now white. Indeed, if there is a whiter preacher currently running a megachurch, that man must glow. (See the top 10 religion stories...
...religious success story. In 1974, Hybels was a youth pastor whose meetings outdrew the church he worked for by a factor of three. In '75, he and several friends founded Willow, aiming at people with little Christian affiliation, informally dubbed "unchurched Harry and Mary." The congregation boomed - the word megachurch was reputedly coined to describe it - and Hybels became the poster boy for the new movement of exurban big-box churches...
...Harry and Mary were white: Willow attracted almost nobody of color. The gurus of the megachurch explosion were church-growth consultants, who endorsed the "homogeneous unit principle": people like to worship with people who are similar to them - in age, wealth and race. Hybels, while denying intentional exclusivity, says that "in the early days, we were all young, white, affluent, college-educated suburbanites, and we all understood each other. When we reached out to our friends, it became self-reinforcing...
...last year, the outgoing U.S. President was the man of the hour, fielding praise from global health advocates and world leaders for the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPfAR, which increased tenfold the number of HIV-infected patients in Africa who receive antiretroviral treatments. At megachurch pastor Rick Warren's Global Health Forum on Dec. 1, 2008, Bush lingered to discuss this untarnished highlight of his presidency, a commitment of $15 billion over five years to combat HIV/AIDS. "No U.S. President or political leader has done more for global health," said Warren...