My friend Murph sent me a link a few days ago to an article on Salon about a fellow named Mark Driscoll who operates a church in Seattle called Mars Hill. For the most part, the article didn’t tell me a lot that I didn’t already know about the modern evangelical movement. This church, like many others in the mega-church movement, is run by a young, charismatic leader who preaches Hell fire and damnation, talks with relish about the end times, and urges his flock to multiply prodigiously. The twist is, this particular pastor has had a great deal of success with the young, tattooed and pierced set. The writer of the piece, it seems, feels as though this is what makes the story interesting – the fact that Driscoll has been successful in packaging and selling an “edgy” Jesus to disenfranchised hipsters on the margins of society. When I read it, however, the thing that most strikes me is the depth and the sophistication of the infrastructure supporting Driscoll’s followers, and how seductive it all sounds. They haven’t just constructed a stern yet cool, father-like Jesus that resonates with today’s young adults (who, according to the artice, crave discipline), but they have created a real, thriving community network that ties together their followers and reinforces them.

Single church members live in dormitories, or rent rooms in the houses of married church members. Every opportunity is taken to introduce single male and female members to one another. (On average, the Mars Hill congregation sees 100 marriages a year between members.) Meals are shared. Childcare is provided. And people, generally speaking, are looked out for. If not for all the talk of an angry God, women being subsurviant to their husbands, and the rest of it, I’d find it pretty appealing. (Of course, I also think that Jim Jones was really on to something in Guyana.)

(For an interesting perspective, read the blog of a former Mars Hill member here. While he had to leave, once he began to question the fundamentalism of the church, you can tell that he really misses the social aspects.)

Anyway, the piece led to a good discussion between Murph and I on the nature of community, the importance of inter-personal connections, and the seeming inability of the non-fundamentalist left to build similar models. And I was thinking that perhaps it would be a good discussion to have here.

And, here, in the way of introduction, is a clip from the Salon article:

“Driscoll promises his followers they don’t have to reprogram their iTunes catalog along with their beliefs – culture from outside the Christian fold isn’t just tolerated here, it’s cherished. Hipster culture is what sweetens the proverbial Kool-Aid, which parishioners here seem to gulp by the gallon. This is a land where housewives cradle babies in tattooed arms, where young men balance responsibilities as breadwinners in their families and lead guitarists in their local rock bands, and where biblical orthodoxy rules as strictly as in Hasidism or Opus Dei"…

He riffs about waiting in a supermarket checkout line behind a woman who said to him, “You sure got a lot of kids! I hope you’ve figured out what causes that.”

“Yeah,” he flipped back. “A blessed wife. I bet you don’t have any kids.” The congregation hoots and hollers. “That shut her up,” he mutters….

The stand-up routine-like delivery no doubt has them rolling in the aisles, but, again, that’s not the thing that interests me about Mars Hill. It’s not the fact that they’re selling religion as entertainment, or that they’re pushing the “full quiver” brand of birth control, but that the people seem so genuinely happy in the tightly-knit community they’ve built together. When you join the church, you truly join a family, in the best sense of the word. Yes, they’re religious fanatics obsessed with repopulating their city (and the country) with Christian warriors, but they seem truly content. Clearly there’s a hunger for this type of community, and they seem to have found a way to address that need.

And this model is growing. Through the organization Acts 29, 60 new churches have been accepted into the Mars Hill network over the past year.

So, my question is this: How can we, the non-Biblical-literalists, compete? What do we offer in terms of real community? And, even if we did offer some sort of sustainable infrastructure here on Earth, what do we have for people to look forward to on the other side? Having read this article, I’m finding it hard to imagine a competitive model. And, even if we had a competitive vision and the community infrastructure to pull it off, we’d still lose on the grounds of fertility (unless we really get serious about those condomless progressive orgies I’ve been advocating). So, with all that said, I’m very sad to have to present this next piece of prophecy… It is my belief that so-called progressives are headed toward extinction.

[This post was brought to you by Jesus Camp.]