This is not just the publication of my PhD. Chapters have been edited, two removed, and two new ones added, including a preface. My entire angle has also shifted to include an assessment of evangelical religion in Canada. Evangelicals...
moreThis is not just the publication of my PhD. Chapters have been edited, two removed, and two new ones added, including a preface. My entire angle has also shifted to include an assessment of evangelical religion in Canada. Evangelicals have been scandalized by their association with Donald Trump, their megachurches summarily dismissed as “religious Walmarts.” In _The Subversive Evangelical_ I show how a growing group of “reflexive evangelicals” use irony to critique their own tradition and distinguish themselves from the stereotype of right-wing evangelicalism.
Entering the Meeting House - an Ontario-based Anabaptist megachurch - as a participant observer, I discover that the marketing is clever and the venue (a rented movie theatre) is attractive to the more than five thousand weekly attendees. But the heart of the church is its charismatic leader, Bruxy Cavey, whose anti-religious teaching and ironic tattoos offer a fresh image for evangelicals. This charisma, I argue, is not just the power of one individual; it is a dramatic production in which Cavey, his staff, and attendees cooperate, cultivating an identity as an “irreligious” megachurch and providing followers with a more culturally acceptable way to practise their faith in a secular age.
Going behind the scenes to small group meetings, church dance parties, and the homes of attendees to investigate what motivates these reflexive evangelicals, I reveal a playful and provocative counterculture that distances itself from prevailing stereotypes while still embracing a conservative Christian faith.
"Creatively written and engaging, The Subversive Evangelical is an important book and a pleasure to read." Sam Reimer, Crandall University
_The Subversive Evangelical_ provides a compelling portrait of an ironic religious orientation--an anti-Christian Christianity--that mixes subversion and deconversion to uphold religious orthodoxy while seeming to reject it. This book uncovers the sociological workings of an enormous multi-campus megachurch led by an overweight, unkempt, and self-deprecating pastor who kicks seriousness to the curb and insists that Jesus is a totally fun guy. This quirky, whimsical, and iconoclastic minister overturns established tradition by restructuring his church around "Those Who Hate Church." Given the increased number of disaffected white Christians walking away from organized religion, this book explains how an inventive and charismatic leader adopted and now orchestrates the performance of an unexpected and newly legitimated ecclesiology for contemporary evangelicals, one that is aggressively fighting for the continued relevancy of congregational faith in North America.
Gerardo Martí, L Richardson King Professor of Sociology at Davidson College and co-author of The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity.
A rigorous sociological, theoretical, and empirical ethnographic study of one of Canada's most witty, playful, and humorous evangelical leaders (and his congregation). Schuurman masterfully unpacks the place of charisma in a congregation's attempt to systematically distance itself from a popularized and stigmatized conception of what it means to be evangelical in a post-Christian Canada. A must read for scholars of religion and church leaders in Canada who wish to think carefully and critically about congregations and/or evangelicals.
Joel Thiessen, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Director, Flourishing Congregations Institute
