Synopses & Reviews
In an era where church attendance has reached an all-time low, recent polling has shown that Americans are becoming less formally religious and more promiscuous in their religious commitments. Within both mainline and evangelical Christianity in America, it is common to hear of secularizing pressures and increasing competition from nonreligious sources. Yet there is a kind of religious institution that has enjoyed great popularity over the past thirty years: the evangelical megachurch. Evangelical megachurches not only continue to grow in number, but also in cultural, political, and economic influence. To appreciate their appeal is to understand not only how they are innovating, but more crucially, where their innovation is taking place. In this groundbreaking and interdisciplinary study, Justin G. Wilford argues that the success of the megachurch is hinged upon its use of space: its location on the postsuburban fringe of large cities, its fragmented, dispersed structure, and its focus on individualized spaces of intimacy such as small group meetings in homes, which help to interpret suburban life as religiously meaningful and create a sense of belonging. Based on original fieldwork at Rick Warrens Saddleback Church, one of the largest and most influential megachurches in America, Sacred Subdivisions explains how evangelical megachurches thrive by transforming mundane secular spaces into arenas of religious significance.
Review
"The author, using the literature and theoretical work in cultural geography, makes a strong case that Postdenominational Evangelical (PE) Megachurches must be analyzed not simply as more effective marketers of religious goods, but as innovators in a fragmented and post-suburban social and spatial environment that dictates a new form of meaning-making relative to religion. As a reviewer (who is not a geographer), I found the text fascinating study. Wilfords grasp of the literature in sociology of religion and in his own discipline is impressive. His willingness to push against old and new paradigms and prejudices was bracing."-James K. Wellman Jr.,University of Washington
Review
"This is a brilliant analysis of why postsuburban megachurches, such as Rick Warrens Saddleback Community Church, are growing. Justin Wilford utilizes his training as a geographer to understand the fit between suburban sprawl and postdenominational churches. These liturgically lithe, symbolically flexible, and spatially supple churches are attractive to people living fragmented lives because they mirror the choices available to residents of secular suburbia, while at the same time supplying community, therapeutic insight, and biblically-informed language of how to live a purposeful life."-Donald E. Miller, Center for Religion and Civic Culture, University of Southern California
Review
“Wilford writes clearly and makes complex issues quite accessible. Anthropologists of Christianity and contemporary American cities, especially, stand to benefit from the books major insights about the deep entanglements of evangelical religion, late modernity, and the cultural geography of postsuburbia.”-James S. Bielo,Anthropological Quarterly
Review
“Wilfords holistic reading of the evangelical landscape provides a new understanding of how megachurches have swept across suburban America.”-Deborah Justice,Marginalia
Review
"Wilford does a great service by highlighting the role of the material and spatial configuration of large evangelical congregations and has simultaneously brought secularization debates into geography and important spatial theory into the sociology of religion."-Peter Schuurman,Oxford University Press
About the Author
Justin G. Wilford is visiting lecturer and staff research associate in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Table of Contents
Introduction2. Sacred Archipelagos: Spaces of Secularization 3. Sacred Scenes: Postsuburbia and Evangelical Performance 4. Purpose Driven Pluralities: Variety, Consumption, and Choice in Postdenominational Evangelicalism 5. Purpose Driven Places: Small Performances in Big Churches 6. Purpose Driven Planet: The Globalization of Evangelical Postsuburbia7. Purpose Driven Politics: The Saddleback Civil Forum and the New Civility of Evangelism 8. Conclusion: Assembling Spaces of Fusion, De-fusion, and Diffusion in the Postsuburban Landscape