America always had a certain flair for bringing Christianity to others. This was the country where Mormons learned how to do their door-to-door recruitment, after all.

Unlike other countries, where churches were part of the government’s budget, American churches were often treated as businesses. In no place is this truer than the world of Evangelical megachurches.

In recent years, a striking trend started to take hold. Megachurches, once an exclusively American cultural icon, have started to wither away. But, why is this happening? And how did these churches even get their start?

By the 1920s, churches in California started to create their own radio shows — a way for people to get their Sunday sermons without even leaving the house. It was a smash hit and helped launch the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, a 5,000-seat church that was the larges in the country.

In the 1950s, a pastor did something that would change the trajectory of American Christianity for the rest of history. Pastor Robert Schuller created a “drive-in” church where he would preach in front of hundreds of people, stir up a show, and have parishioners honk their horns instead of say “Amen.”

The topics Schuller used were also fairly unique in those days: uplifting messages, practical messages about life quality, and motivational messages. It was far more upbeat than the typical threat of damnation people heard.

People ate it up. This was the first time that Americans truly got to see something that was more about building a “show” than it was fire and brimstone. Devoted parishioners poured in donations, all to help “spread the word.”

Churches like Schuller’s and the Angelus Temple both quickly gained a reputation. They were bold, popular, community-oriented, and oddly gaudy in their own right. And for the pastors, they were surprisingly profitable.

And thus, the concept of an American megachurch was born.

In the United States, churches aren’t taxed. They’re considered to be nonprofit organizations. Despite this, most megachurches are run like businesses — pastors make a serious salary from their church, often buy private jets to “help save souls,” and even get thousand-dollar suits.

People all pay money to churches, sometimes to the point of donating thousands of dollars a month. It’s known as “tithing” in Mormonism, but it goes by many other names.

Paying that fee basically makes you a member of the church — at least in many cases. But, American churches aren’t churches in the normal sense of the word. They’re businesses.

The donations expected of you are a price tag, though you’re not supposed to say that part out loud. For that money, you get to feel like your soul is saved. You get to be part of a community, and maybe get an invite to an event or two.

As many people have seen online, if you don’t donate money to said megachurch, you might end up getting publicly shamed for it.

There are upsells, too.

Most megachurches have childcare and preschool, often at a fee. They also have their own bookstores, food courts, and gift shops — also open for a fee. So, there are multiple revenue streams coming in from the devoted.

Churches use the “donations” in a lot of ways, including things like buying airspace on the radio, funding conversion groups, buying more buildings, upgrading their streaming tech, and even buying ads on YouTube. A massive chunk, though, remains as pocket money for the pastor.

Donations from Evangelical churches also regularly fund allied organizations such as Evangelical colleges, schools, and even missionary camps. The idea is simple: convert people and keep them spending at all walks of life.

Most megachurches also partook in something known as “prosperity gospel,” which is kind of like what the Pharisees kept preaching. While Jesus said to help the poor, prosperity gospel suggests that being poor is your fault and that if you’re wealthy, it’s because you did right by God.

Prosperity gospel is excellent for people who want to make money off faithful people, because it heavily emphasizes giving to the church. These guys see it as “giving a loan to God,” so to speak. So, the money kept flowing in…for decades.

According to the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, churches have their own $1.2 trillion dollar economy in the United States alone. This does not include the overall wealth of the Mormon church’s investment portfolio or investments of similar church groups — we’re strictly talking about the money flowing in and out!

I want you to think about that.

$1.2 trillion is enough money to…

Yet it’s not being done. That economy is just for churches and the good it could do is just not being done. It’s being horded by people like Jim Bakker who currently beg for millions to avoid their own homelessness.

One of the most quiet secrets about the megachurch world is that it’s actively collapsing. Megachurches peaked fairly recently, during the 1990s and 2000s. Churches had as many as 40,000 members in some areas.

Today, they’re facing serious (and often insurmountable) losses. For example, the Elevation Church lost a total of 12,000 members alone.

Much of this really became apparent in 2020, during the pandemic. Post-pandemic, typical megachurches found themselves operating with only 2,000 members per house. Some, such as the Crystal Cathedral, declared bankruptcy.

It’s wild to think about, isn’t it?

You would think with the crazy amount of money churches put into recruiting new members, that they would be booming. The truth is that they’re failing because they’re in a perfect storm of factors that would harm their chance at keeping members.

Don’t know what I mean? Well, here’s a quick dose of reality.

I’m not going to lie, a large part of the reason why megachurches are failing is because of the megachurches’ behavior. People have started to speak out about the spiritual abuse they’ve experienced in churches. People have seen the videos of pastors shaming families for not donating thousands to a church.

Like it or not, churches have done a lot of damage to American society in recent years. There are churches that have pushed misogyny onto young, impressionable men. There are churches that broke apart families over LGBT issues and white nationalism. It’s been ugly.

After a while, even the most devout people will start to notice the hypocrisy of these churches. Women, in particular, started to notice how poorly the church system treats them — and they’ve been leaving in droves as a result of it.

While this was making churches struggle before, the truth is that 2020 really hammered it in. The pandemic forced people to isolate for the sake of stopping the spread of COVID-19.

A lot of people never really got out of that “forced introversion” vibe they found themselves in. As a result, they don’t go out anywhere, especially not to community gatherings like churches.

The megachurch world was part of the Baby Boomer experience. The problem is, Baby Boomers are starting to die out. While Boomers found most megachurch leaders to be relatable in a showy way, Gen Z doesn’t.

Most people have heard of all the priests who have been arrested as a result of their indecent actions towards children. Some have even heard of the crazy thing that happened with Jerry Falwell Jr. and that cuckold poolboy disaster.

Sex scandals are fairly common in the world of megachurches, for reasons that are hard to fully explain. Regardless, hearing one too many scandals will make people rethink who they choose to worship with — especially if they have kids.

Now, let’s talk about the biggest elephant in the room. Megachurches have a bad reputation when it comes to money expenditures. Whether it’s demanding patrons pay for a private jet for the pastor’s time out, being a tax fraud center, or just stealing from the poor doesn’t matter.

What matters is that people noticed a lot of financial fraud going on in these churches. People generally don’t want to pay people who are defrauding the IRS through a church.

Simply put, most people want a church where they feel accepted, where they practice what they preach, and where Jesus isn’t a product. That’s not the way megachurches generally operate.

It’s hard to say.

Many small-scale churches are also starting to close their doors, with megachurches often scooping up stragglers from those old flocks. On the flip side, many megachurches are also losing their parishioners to smaller, more local-based groups.

What I can say is that we’re going to see a lot more documentaries about American fundie megachurches and the bizarre, wild excesses they used to have. After all, talking about the madness still remains a part of the American Way.