Megachurches and the cultural applications of religion

I have long argued in private that Singapore megachurch Christianity resembles folk Taoism as much as it does conventional Christianity. Adherents of megachurches, many of whom would have renounced Taoism to convert to Christianity, may rise in uproar. But I am undeterred in my observation.

There are many ways to look at the human phenomenon known as religion. Classifying people or groups of people by nominal self-declaration is one. Classifying them according to their doctrinal similarities is another, though it is one that some religious adherents tend to insist as the sole valid way. In part, this springs from the demand that religion is a phenomenon unto itself, and it can only be assayed on its own terms.

The religious may think it is potentially demeaning to their faith to examine the phenomenon from other disciplinary perspectives, e.g. psychology, sociology or political science. And yet, there can be no full understanding of the part played by religion in human lives and society — and in geopolitics as well — without bringing these other perspectives to bear.

The theme of this essay is how the cultural manifestation of megachurch Christianity in Singapore is closer to that of folk Taoism than other Christian streams. I believe this angle will add to the understanding of the findings revealed by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) from a recently-reported survey titled Church, Class, Attitudes: A Survey of Church-going Protestants in Singapore.

The survey was conducted between December 2009 and January last year. Respondents were asked to fill up a questionnaire. The findings — released yesterday at a press conference — were based on 2,663 questionnaires from respondents at 24 churches here. — Today, 17 April 2012, Megachurch goers ‘less likely to exercise moral influence publicly’: Survey, by Syed Amir Hussain

According to the Straits Times, the questionnaire was 14 pages long. This suggests that there is plenty of data in there we haven’t yet seen, but since it will be several months before ISEAS publishes a book on this, all I have for now are news reports and a few graphs from the Straits Times, 17 April 2012:

Difference in attitudes

With that caveat, what we can see from the graphs is that the attitudes of megachurch members are slightly more conservative than members of other protestant churches. This you can gather from the first and the third graphs, though I am not sure whether the small differences in the first graph have been tested for significance.

However, projecting those values into the public sphere is not something that megachurch members are keen on, compared to other Protestants, as can be seen in the second and fourth graphs.

It appears that these members view religion as more personal than public. They do not quite think it legitimate to impose their views on state and society, at least not to the same extent as other Christians surveyed.

One hypothesis for this is that megachurch adherents are more often than not new converts to Christianity. Being new converts, they have friends and family members belonging to other religions, and therefore intuitively feel it awkward to impose.

And while most respondents agreed that Christians should interact more with people of other faiths, those from megachurches were likely to already have friends from different religions. They were also more inclined to spend their leisure time with them. A possible explanation might be that they often have parents from Buddhist or Taoist backgrounds, explained the researchers. — Straits Times, 17 April 2012, Megachurches ‘conservative but tolerant’, by Jennani Durai

“Old” Christians, on the other hand, mostly found in the traditional denominations of Anglicanism and Methodism, tend to come from Christian families. There is more conformity in their social and family circles, and they may grow up expecting such conformity to be normal.

Confluence with folk Taoism

I posit here a different explanation, which is not mutually exclusive with the above. It is that with many megachurch members coming from families with Taoist backgrounds — and I am told megachurch congregations are disproportionately Chinese — they bring with them Chinese cultural attitudes to the role of religion. Traditionally, the Chinese see religion as something for personal benefit and improvement, rather than a source of norms for remaking earthly society according to the dictates of gods. This attitude can be glimpsed from a line in Today’s news story:

Follow-up focus group sessions with respondents from megachurches found that, to them, “morality was articulated as a private matter” and “moral influence is to be exercised through one’s private capacity in spheres that one is active in, rather than by imposing values through the church as a civic organisation”. — Today, 17 April 2012, Megachurch goers ‘less likely to exercise moral influence publicly’: Survey, by Syed Amir Hussain

A related fact is that doctrinally, megachurches in Singapore preach the “health and wealth” prosperity gospel. This is a widely-known fact, though it is also hinted at by this sentence in the report:

It also found that those who attend a megachurch tend to give more to their church in the form of tithes, come from the emergent middle class and be more likely to view wealth as an indicator of a person’s faithfulness. — ibid.

This is perhaps why Singaporeans (and myself) tend to use the term “megachurch” as shorthand for this stream of Christian teaching, when strictly speaking the term should merely refer to congregation size. ISEAS, for the purpose of its study, defined a megachurch as a non-denominational church, attracting 2,000 worshippers or more a week and often featuring a charismatic senior pastor, with rock concert-style services or a multitude of outreach ministries.

The similarities with folk Taoism are these:

The idea that the chief purpose of a relationship with a deity is a protective and benefactive one;

That ritual is important, the more expressive and exuberant the better;

Tithe-giving and earnest expressions of faith considered to be congruent, even positively-related, with material success.

I need to stress that in this essay I am not discussing doctrinal systems, but only cultural manifestations: the behavioural performance of religion and the meanings attached to it. By this measure, Singapore megachurches fit more within the Chinese or Taoist folk tradition than conventional, more austere Protestantism. The god (and loyalties) may have changed, but the role of religion in their lives remain much the same.

In truth, neither this strand of Christianity nor the style of worship we see in our megachurches is original to Singapore; they are very much imported. What I am postulating is that their parallels with Chinese folk religious practices and attitudes helped these churches gain adherents locally (even if the adherents would vociferously deny it) to such an extent that today we in Singapore conflate the “mega” in megachurch with the prosperity gospel. Crossover was made easier because the cultural manifestation was similar.

Christianity as status marker

If that’s the case, why convert? As any historian knows, through the centuries and throughout the world, conversion is more often for social (sometimes political) reasons than any other. And so it is in this case, in my view. There is a much higher status to be had calling oneself a Christian than a Taoist. And once the process has been seeded in a society, peer pressure and the need to belong gives it momentum. It is much like how we descendants of immigrants from China who had come wearing the samfoo (a tunic and trouser combination that women wore) have adopted Western-style clothes. We would not be caught dead wearing the samfoo today unless it’s for a fancy-dress ball. Being “modern”, much-equated with “Western”, has snob appeal.

In this respect, I thought this finding of the researchers particularly interesting:

Megachurch worshippers aged 29 and below were also more likely to have lived in public housing, to speak Mandarin at home, and to have parents with lower levels of education. The researchers characterised them as an ‘aspiring or emergent middle class that has achieved upward social mobility’. — Straits Times, 17 April 2012, Megachurches ‘conservative but tolerant’, by Jennani Durai

Taking up Christianity can be explained as one more box to be checked on the path of social ascent. Conversion is a sociological phenomenon with social benefits, even if the subject is not fully conscious of it. What conversion is not is to be probative of the truth claims of any doctrine.

This is not to say that their Christianity is skin-deep or that megachurch members do not whole-heartedly embrace the Bible and the gospels. I can assume that they do, and that they will feel it a greatly positive influence on their lives. But I will point out that one can make oneself believe anything. Singapore has a term for it, even though we only use it to refer to Islamist extremists: self-radicalisation. Put aside the negative connotations, and you will see that the process is much the same even if the end-points are different.

Avoiding questioning

Yet, here again, I can make one more comparison with folk Taoism. I think the nature of belief in megachurch Christianity is a little less questioning than in other, more longstanding strands of Christianity. Some churches value their intellectual tradition, but it would seem to me that charismaticism and the prosperity gospel would present considerable obstacles to intellectualism.

Folk Taoism is not known for critical enquiry either. One accepts certain givens about the nature of gods and their powers, otherwise it might get too difficult to understand how elaborate ritual can lead to passing exams or curing disease.

This absence of questioning can be seen in the relative conservatism espoused by megachurch members, for an absence of interrogation tends to produce a bias towards traditionalist reading. For example, the graph #5 below shows them to be more disapproving of homosexuality than other Protestant Christians, albeit by a small margin. You also see it in the third graph above, with respect to a stance against pre-marital sex.

Yet, the graph #6 shows them far more comfortable with interacting with homosexual persons. How to explain this?

Certainly, the megachurch members’ tendency to see religion as a personal matter must play a large part. But it still begs the question why, for all the interaction with gay people, they still hold such conservative beliefs? Why haven’t their beliefs changed? This question precipitates the very point I want to make: one cannot explain it without admitting the thesis that in this strand of Christianity, questioning received beliefs is just not done. Here, once more, is a similarity with Chinese folk religion, the same religion that many people, including megachurch members, would describe as being full of unexamined superstition.