When I accompanied a group of Dartmouth students on a tour of civil rights sites in the South a couple of weeks ago, we attended two churches on Sunday morning in Atlanta, the venerable and historic Ebenezer Baptist Church and an evangelical megachurch. The success of the megachurch suggests that young adults may be returning to religion.
It’s called simply 2819 Church, a reference to the so-called Great Commission, the mandate for evangelism in the New Testament book of Matthew. Founded by Philip Anthony Mitchell, a native of Queens, N.Y., 2819 has been attracting a lot of attention lately. The Associated Press published a feature and CNN did a piece recently on this phenomenon, reporting that some congregants traveled hundreds of miles every Sunday to attend.
As we approached, traffic police directed us to the parking lot of a nearby shopping mall, where we boarded a shuttle bus to the church. When we arrived at 6:30 a.m. for the 8 a.m. service (the first of three on any given Sunday), the line already snaked around the parking lot.
Several “greeters” circulated, engaging first-time visitors. I asked one why the church was so popular, and the greeter responded that 2819 offered a no-nonsense message about sin. Mitchell, for example, calls out transgressions, including cohabitation and premarital sex.
The website announces, “No Names. No Gimmicks. Just Jesus.”
Once inside, we heard a woman onstage declaiming loudly while the music and the percussion reached a crescendo as the digital clock at the rear of the auditorium counted down toward 8 a.m. Then the “worship team,” now ubiquitous in evangelical settings, took over.
I find evangelical “praise music,” as they call it, both tedious and emotionally coercive, engineered to elicit a particular response. It’s also formulaic, not to mention repetitive. The initial song, loud and percussive with strobe lights and smoke machine, morphs into a second with similar cadences.
At that point, as I had predicted to the student next to me, the tempo slowed, and the music became meditative as the worship team closed its eyes, one hand raised to the ceiling and the other clutching a microphone. The congregation typically assumes the same posture, absent the microphone.
It’s meant to be a synesthetic experience, and it is, with flashing lights and a sound system capable of dislodging dental fillings. The music itself, a combination of rock and hip-hop, was high quality, much better than most megachurches.
Following the music, a preacher appeared, in this case one of the associate pastors, wearing denims and a hoodie. Formulaic, once again.
Mitchell was off writing a book. “The perversion of The Faith in the west, our growing lack of reverence, and our overt mockery of Christ moves me to deep grief,” he says on the 2819 website.
Mitchell, a person of color like many in his congregation, served time on Rikers Island in New York City, a fact he often mentions in his sermons. His past includes dealing drugs, paying for abortions and attempted suicide. God, he says, “used failure to transform my life.”
Apparently, that message resonates with his predominantly young adult followers. Although the reasons are not clear, anecdotal evidence suggests that young adults are flocking to religion, not only megachurches but Catholic parishes and even Orthodox Christianity. I’m tempted to believe that what drives this phenomenon, at least in part, is the search for a moral compass, something in short supply from political leaders.
“It is life or death for me,” Mitchell told the Associated Press about his preaching, which he compared to warfare. “There are souls that are hanging in the balance.”
Mitchell stirred controversy a year ago when he exhorted his congregation to stop blaming police officers for brutality and teach their children to “be obedient towards authority.” The backlash in the Black community was so great that Mitchell apologized.
That controversy hasn’t diminished the ardor of his followers. Last October, the church held a “prayer event” that drew approximately 40,000 people, filling State Farm Arena and an overflow space in the nearby convention center. Thousands more, the church said, were left outside.
While Catholicism draws on tradition and Orthodoxy too often on patriarchy, Mitchell’s fiery sermons and the church’s no-nonsense teachings may have found a niche in a society hungry for moral clarity.
Randall Balmer is the John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth.