Democracy Now! had a segment this morning featuring Michelle Goldberg who has just written a book called Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. It looks like her book is about all the typical dominionism stuff, but I thought she had some very interesting observations in the interview. She talked about the way the megachurch phenomenon interacts with the suburban/exurban phenomenon, and how brand new, non-urban areas have no built-in social infrastructure (central coffee shops, community organizations) like older urban environments do, and how megachurches nicely fill that void (with gyms, after-school programs, and often coffee shops as well!). When the megachurch becomes the foundation of the community, it provides the ideal environment to foster the kinds of nationalism and dominionism we’ve seen take hold of the United States.

What brings this all to the headlines is, of course, the Memphis church who has erected a copy of the Statue of Liberty who hoists a wooden cross instead of a torch.

You can listen to or watch today’s Democracy Now! at their website; there are various download/streaming options.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 7:19 am and is filed under church, america, politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.