Word: worshiper
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...superchurch, a mall-size, high-profile house of worship, is the natural counterpart of the super-supermarket and the multiplex cinema. Brimming with self-confidence, these congregations -- many of them independent of established Protestant denominations -- have an increasing edge in the competitive marketplace of U.S. religion and an inexorable attraction for choosy consumers. Superchurches represent many denominational labels or no label, but nearly all are Evangelical, Fundamentalist, Charismatic or Pentecostalist, preaching a conservative theology...
Along with enthusiastic, often entertaining, worship, a major attraction is the churches' spiritual equivalent of one-stop shopping. They provide not only Sunday school but also long lists of elective courses for adults or specialized ministries, for instance for the hearing impaired or developmentally disabled. Groups can be targeted to Vietnamese immigrants, young divorces, 50-plus singles or compulsive eaters. "When you help people, your congregation grows," says Pastor Tommy Barnett of the mushrooming First Assembly of God in Phoenix. Barnett's church has programs for AIDS patients, the wheelchair users, transients and alcoholics...
...weekly audience, plummeting from 2.2 million viewers to fewer than 400,000. Enrollment at his Bible college is down by two-thirds, to & 450, and several floors of a classroom building have been leased out. An intended 12-story dormitory, half a block from his showcase Family Worship Center, stands abandoned in mid-construction, its windows void of glass, tall weeds crowding its rusted entryway. Swaggart can still draw the faithful: a couple of weeks ago, 1,200 people attended a three-hour Sunday service, at which he sang, preached and pleaded for money. But Swaggart attorney and co- defendant...
CAPTION: Question asked of people who worship...
...purists should cringe at the way Pete Rose, his skills long vanished, was lionized for his Captain Ahab-like quest to break Ty Cobb's record for career base hits. Collision at Home Plate by James Reston Jr. (HarperCollins; $19.95) is a cautionary tale about the dangers of hero worship. This joint biography of Rose and baseball commissioner Bart Giamatti -- the former Yale University president who banished Rose from baseball in 1989 and then died suddenly little more than a week later -- never quite works. The irony is too heavyhanded, the juxtapositions too stark, the character of Rose too pathetic...