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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   26010 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 9, 2026

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This community is a spinoff of a spinoff of a rationalist community, there are is no question there are a lot of Zionist Jews here.

The MAGA types that would be here are more likely to be of the variety highly skeptical of the war (the low-IQ MAGA rank-and-file that supports the war at like 90%+ are not represented here much as far as I can tell). High-IQ Iran War supporters here, very likely to be Jews. Not to say there also aren't skeptical Jews as well.

But I don't get why people would want a location marker to correlate people's opinions on this question. If you really wanted signal you would want a different kind of profile badge that would not be appropriate for this forum.

But I don't get why people would want a location marker to correlate people's opinions on this question.

Christianity is one question where location marker would be quite helpful. A commenter claiming to be a Catholic from the US is going to have some very different opinions, outlook and rhetoric compared to a European (or South American) Catholic.

It's interesting to see the parts of the American conservative coalition that are represented even after we account for tastes in intellectualism(like duh, megachurch Evangelicals do not want to engage in philosophical political discussion. That's not to say they're stupid, but they simply have different tastes). We have tradcaths but no orthodox Jews and I've never seen a confessional Lutheran. We have libertarian techbros and NrX types but few of the deep red RFK fan lifestyle skeptics- you know, the real life Ron Swanson types. Really very few crunchycons at all. None of the black dissidents you see hanging around conservative intellectual circles but lots of white nationalists. We've had conservative housewives in the past, but I think all of our women are working right now.

like duh, megachurch Evangelicals do not want to engage in philosophical political discussion.

Speak for yourself! Some Evangelicals get C.S. Lewis-Pilled.

Are you a "megachurch" evangelical, though?

Eh. Depends on your definition. I’ve been at small churches and bigger churches over the years. Current church is on the big side, but I don’t know if it’s “mega”. I’m not sure how many members we have exactly, but there are two different service times and several hundred people at each service. Plus there’s a “satellite campus” on the other side of town, and another one up in the valley.

As a working definition, I would say a church is a megachurch if

  • it is not affiliated to a denomination
  • more than 1000 people watch the same sermons in real-time (either in person or by videolink)

But the interesting thing about megachurch Christianity as practiced in Red America is the distinctive theology and Church polity it produces.

The theology is de facto based around the "born-again" experience and the personal relationship between individual believers and Jesus (if you are being polite) or about being gay for Jesus (if you are being rude from a male perspective) or about Jesus wanting to be your perfect romance-novel boyfriend (if you are being rude from a female perspective).

The Church polity is based around the effectively total-within-their-Church authority of individual charismatic lead pastors who are openly permitted to keep a significant percentage of the collection plate for their personal consumption.

The theology is de facto based around the "born-again" experience and the personal relationship between individual believers and Jesus (if you are being polite) or about being gay for Jesus (if you are being rude from a male perspective) or about Jesus wanting to be your perfect romance-novel boyfriend (if you are being rude from a female perspective).

This is simply evangelical Christianity, as practiced since the great awakenings. There are plenty of small, very non-megachurch churches where the theology on this point is indistinguishable.

One of Trump's favorite pastors, Robert Jeffress, is affiliated with the southern Baptist convention. His First Baptist Dallas church has satellite campuses, has a theological convergence little different from nearby and well known megachurches, and he is the son of the previous lead pastor. This is a megachurch, and so are tons of other SBC churches.

Is there any non-pejorative definition of Megachurch? I mean this honestly, I only use it as a negative term of abuse. A sufficiently good Megachurch would become something else, almost by definition.

Is there any non-pejorative definition of Megachurch?

Non-denominational (but theologically probably heavily Baptist) church with a parking lot the size of a big-box store.

I'd argue a majority of megachurches are actually affiliated with a denomination technically speaking, but a defining feature of the megachurch is that it downplays the denominational affiliation if it has one, and focuses on the pastor and brand energy™ to solidify the church's identity. Denominations, like the SBC, or some historically charismatic/Pentecostal denominations that have megachurches affiliated with them often have a tense relationship with the megachurches because they're renegades. But they also are huge, attract large crowds that put money in the plate, and therefore wield large influence in the denomination.

That said, old-school Baptists/Pentecostals are immensely critical of them, particularly among the Pentecostals. Megachurches generally downplay or outright eliminate the 'holy roller' elements associated with classical Pentecostalism, the dancing, the speaking in tongues, and the snakes, because those are generally highly off-putting to lapsed Christians who want a church that entertains them without challenging them. Pentecostals without those elements are essentially Baptists, so except for the minority of genuinely charismatic megachurches, you'd be hard pressed to tell a megachurch affiliated with a historically Pentecostal denomination from an SBC megachurch from a non-denominational one.

The only times I've ever encountered the term IRL have been purely descriptive usages similar to MadMonzer's definition with no negative implications.

Maybe this is a me-problem but reading @MadMonzer I'd say:

about being gay for Jesus (if you are being rude from a male perspective) or about Jesus wanting to be your perfect romance-novel boyfriend (if you are being rude from a female perspective).

and

individual charismatic lead pastors who are openly permitted to keep a significant percentage of the collection plate for their personal consumption.

Strike me as inherently pejorative negative definitions.

But maybe that's just my preferences. Even baptist pastors tend to tell me they "aren't Megachurches" or pejoratively refer to another congregation as a "would-be Megachurch" around me. Come to think of it, could be a regional thing: megachurch is something "they" do not something "we" do.

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Have any of your churches ever utilized a smoke machine during a worship service?

Ha! One did, back in my college days.

Uh oh, I may have to diagnose you with megachurch American.

I can’t judge though - I was baptized in a megachurch, which didn’t even do me the favor of keeping any baptismal records. This became a slight issue when I needed documentation of baptism. Fortunately I had videographic evidence.

In a lot of ways the broader evangelical orbit has become megachurch-y, even if most of the clearly negative elements like pastoral financial enrichment are absent. I’m well aware of the social movement in evangelical circles towards imitation of whatever gets people to keep coming.

That said, there’s also a clear movement away from the Jesus rock/stage entertainment model of evangelical services, and I know of evangelicals converting to conservative Anglicanism and Presbyterianism, as well as some unusual Baptists who believe Baptists should have liturgical prayer. Lutheranism and Catholicism are less porous, perhaps for sacramentalist reasons, although as a rather high church fellow I insist on baptismal regeneration.

Uh, does over-enthusiastic loading of the thurible with incense count?

Alternatively, do they have bands playing which sound like a third rate copy of U2?

Wait, is this "smoke machine as in theater" or would a Catholic censer count?

Genuinely "smoke machine as in theater." I would also count it as a yes if any of his churches have ever conducted a men's conference featuring monster trucks.

confessional Lutheran

What does that mean, in this context?

A Lutheran belonging to a body which split from the main Lutheran body in his country over the belief that that body doesn’t embrace the Augsburg confession anymore. In the USA the main such body would be the Missouri synod, very common in intellectual conservative circles and big enough to be locally dominant in some areas- but all the self proclaimed confessional Protestants here seem to be reformed.

Missouri Synod Lutheran here. I do think I'm the only one on here, and I never post so it barely counts. Still, there's at least one.

Awareness of the confessional/mainline distinction is basically zero among non-churchgoing people that I've met in real life. Unfortunately, laypeople I meet sometimes hear "Lutheran" and think "ELCA."

I will say LCMS Twitter is surprisingly lively.

This is WELS erasure 😁

I only became aware of the various denominational splits years back when observing the Anglican Wars as they played out in TEC. As a Roman Catholic European outsider, it was fascinating to get any kind of look at American mainline Protestantism and how it tended to split along various lines.

How fascinating that you've even heard of WELS over there! I respect WELS. If it had more presence in my area, I might have ended up going there.

It is crazy how every flavor of Protestantism now has a mainline vs. confessional or evangelical division here. PCA/PCUSA, ELCA/LCMS (and WELS), UMC/GMC (which goes far beyond America); hours of Wikipedia article reading are available to the interested.

Lutherans talk casually about how in America, the big split was ultimately between "German Lutherans" who went to the LCMS, and "Scandi Lutherans" who eventually formed the ELCA; and about how each group's cultural personality informed the direction of their theology. Of course it's much more complicated than that, but there's an element of truth in it.

Ah, interesting. When I was writing my post about the meaning of the term "Evangelical" in Lutheran circles, I actually hypothesized that the split between the ELCA and the confessional churches had something to do with the German vs Scandinavian split, but it's interesting that I was actually on to something.

My great-great grandmother had a copy of Walther's hymnal, in the German of course, which is now in my possession. My mother often tells me the family story about her praying in German. The other family story about her German ancestry consists of her fastidiously sweeping the floor while her husband, a full-blood Scots-Irish good old boy, spat tobacco on the porch. But Lutheranism in my family was wiped out a few generations ago in favor of generic American evangelicalism, or Holiness Pentecostalism.

Awareness of the confessional/mainline distinction is basically zero among non-churchgoing people that I've met in real life. Unfortunately, laypeople I meet sometimes hear "Lutheran" and think "ELCA."

Awareness of that distinction was pretty close to zero for me as a churchgoer growing up.

I think a lot about how much agency it requires to go hunting for the denomination you find the soundest or best, as opposed to just going to the church nearest your house, or that your family goes to. Because as you note, one really has to go out of their way to understand this stuff. Not that it's difficult - just that it's very opaque unless you happen to be a real nerd about the subject.

I actually had to look up the Lutheran church I grew up attending... Evangelical Lutheran, apparently (which is, confusingly enough, not "evangelical"?)

All I know is, the pastor was insistent that nobody bring lutefisk to the smorgasbord, which always disappointed my grandmother. Dunno where that falls ecumenically.

In Lutheran circles, "evangelical" means "believes in the gospel according to Luther's understanding of the gospel," or in other words believe in salvation by faith alone. Luther originally wanted his followers to be called "evangelicals" becaue he believed that his understanding of the gospel, evangelion, was the most important element of his theology. By this definition virtually all protestants are "evangelicals," roughly speaking, and it has that meaning in some of the northern European countries where Lutheranism became the normative version of Protestantism.

The term has come to mean different things in the British and US context because of the history of great revivals with the goal of convincing mass numbers of people to have an emotional experience of surrender to the divine, which was central to their understanding of the gospel in a way that Lutherans/Calvinists/Catholics generally connected to sacraments rather than conversion experiences. Evangelicals (in that sense) also strongly defined themselves as popular preachers who wanted to make large numbers of people have a conversion experience, and felt that naming themselves after the evangelion was worthwhile because that was their message. You could make the argument that Anglo-American evangelicals were also evangelicals in the sense Luther would have meant it, but they just shouted it really, really loudly.

In that sense, Methodism, Pentecostalism, and most forms of the Baptists had major evangelical influences, and you can still find some Anglicans in the UK (a few) and the US (a few more) who would identify with the evangelical movement.

The "Lutheran" term came about because the common Catholic custom was to call a heresy by the name of its inventor, as in Arianism, Hussitism, Calvinism, and also the old-fashioned Christian term for Islam that hydro likes to use, Mohammedanism.

I guess the lesson is that the terms people call themselves rarely denote something concrete. "Democrat" and "Republican?" Their dispute isn't really over whether the US should be a democracy or a republic, though some particularly confused and pedantic Republicans like to claim "the us isn't a democracy, it's a republic!" like those aren't compatible, and the US is of course a Federal Democratic Republic and those terms lent their names to the first American party system (Federalists vs Democratic-Republicans) and to the current party system, while "Democratic Republic" on its own means communist, and "The Democratic Republic of America" is basically the "Man in the High Castle" of conservative fear fantasies. We live in a confusing world, and whales are fish.

Never in a million years would I have expected the word 'evangelion' to be brought up in such a context here or any other place. It's Old Greek supposedly?

Yeah, it's basically the roots eu- (good), angelion (message.) Shares a root with angels, who are the messengers of God.

Presumably it means, “Lutheran, with conservative theology,” or in other words a Lutheran who believes in the real presence as a literal metaphysical belief and takes the Augsburg confession as a literal statement of truth about reality.

Though I’m not sure it’s true we don’t have any. I know we have some confessional Protestants who have positive views of Lutheran scholasticism. Presumably at least one of those is a Lutheran.

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