Megachurches play key role in local economic development

Like this is any surprise. . .

This New York Times article from last Friday explains something that is not terribly shocking to any of us here at the Quail and abroad, as we've been covering the vast depths of American Christianity's bottom line for several weeks running now.

In this context, the story leads with an inspiring anecdote from Anchorage, Alaska, where a megachurch is supporting strong development in the community.

I think this can be wholly positive, and there's no question that a church's place — according to Christian belief — is to support the community. However, as we've been discussing here previously, where is the line drawn between Church and State, and more importantly, between God and Mammon?


From the article:

"Indeed, some huge churches, already politically influential, are becoming catalysts for local economic development, challenging a conventional view that churches drain a town financially by generating lower-paid jobs, taking land off the property-tax rolls and increasing traffic.

But the entrepreneurial activities of churches pose questions for their communities that do not arise with secular development.

These enterprises, whose sponsoring churches benefit from a variety of tax breaks and regulatory exemptions given to religious organizations in this country, sometimes provoke complaints from for-profit businesses with which they compete — as ChangePoint’s new sports center has in Anchorage.

Mixed-use projects, like shopping centers that also include church buildings, can make it difficult to determine what constitutes tax-exempt ministry work, which is granted exemptions from property and unemployment taxes, and what is taxable commerce."

In any case, this is not necessarily problematic from a business standpoint. The "for-profit" companies can be pissed all they want, but the name of the game is competition, and the churches have a leg up on them from a tax-break standpoint. From this perspective — and I don't think anyone would deny this — these churches are capitalistic geniuses.

However, is that the message these Christians want to send?

"The church’s leaders say they hope to draw people to faith by publicly demonstrating their commitment to meeting their community’s economic needs.

'We want to turn people on to Jesus Christ through this process,' said Karl Clauson, who has led the church for more than eight years."

Looking at this statement, it appears that there's cut-throat competition in the spiritual market as well. Again, there has been a longstanding relationship between American Protestantism and the capitalist economics — numbers of saved souls and accumulation of (rapidly decreasing in value) paper being the abstract indicators of wealth, respectively — and these kind of endeavors only seem to be merge the two realms further.