Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Celebrity Megachurches

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

One of our favorite topics to date: In this can’t-miss episode, we’re unpacking the wave of trendy evangelical church groups (like Hillsong, Mosaic, and Churchome), which use Silicon Valley-savvy marketing, celebrity endorsements, charismatic pastors, and a slew of doubtlessly culty recruitment techniques and power structures in an attempt to make Christ “cool” for masses of modern young people. Here to help us understand the cultishness of hipster Christianity is special guest Grace Baldridge, a musician and documentarian behind Refinery29’s “State of Grace” series, which tackles faith, queerness, and American culture. Be sure to follow @GraceBaldridge on Instagram!

This is Sounds Like A Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina, a comedian and documentarian, and I'm Amanda Montell, an author and linguist. Every week here on the pod, Issa and I pick a different fanatical fringe group from the cultural zeitgeist. From Peloton to the Cult of Trader Joe's to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? What's up everyone? Issa here. Really quickly before we start, I wanted to let you all know that tomorrow is the first Wednesday of the month, which means I have my monthly stand-up comedy show at Formosa Cafe in Los Angeles. So if you want to come see my comedy live, check it out. Follow

me on Instagram at Issa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A. I also wanted to give Amanda, my co-host, a big shout out because her book, Cultish, The Language of Fanaticism, just reached audiobook bestseller this week. Congrats Amanda! Now on to the episode. So this week's cult is the Cult of Celebrity Mega Churches, and we all know a celebrity that's in one. Whether you know it or not, we have a lot to say about this subject, but first off, I guess, Amanda, do you want to tell our listeners kind of what we mean by Celebrity Mega Churches? Yes. So this has been a personal obsession of mine for a long time, but essentially they're this wave of evangelical church that have taken over definitely LA's Christian population and have,

since around the early 2010s, so these are these massive congregations of like thousands upon thousands of people that have these names that sound more like apps than houses of God. They're named things like mosaic, oasis, hill song. They have very like hashtag aesthetic social media presences. They have very cool music that play throughout the services. They have say micro batch coffee at every service and limited edition merch drops and celebrity endorsers. It wasn't until Amanda kind of mentioned to me that she wanted to do an episode on this that I didn't realize how many celebrities were in Celebrity Mega Churches. Some celebrities you might not have known are in Celebrity Mega Churches are people like Justin Bieber, Courtney

Kardashian, Ashley Benson. I had no idea until recently, Chris Pratt apparently. Oh yeah. Of course Kanye is a Celebrity Mega Churcher. Obviously celebrities feel really isolated and they probably feel like these mega churches are a space to kind of surrender and get to have your religious experience. I mean a lot of these people grew up religious, but they're kind of rejecting the like boring Protestant churches they grew up with and they're attracted to these churches that offer these Instagram feed friendly slogans like hope isn't canceled and talk of God's healing powers to cure anxiety. Yeah because the thing with cults is that it's always the idea of how cool they might seem to someone on the outside. Totally. So I have always always been obsessed

with evangelicalism. I grew up in an atheist Jewish household so it was just a belief system that was really different to me and I really developed this obsession. First of all when I was in middle school my best friend's mom was a born-again Christian and I would sometimes skip Hebrew school to go accompany her to their evangelical mega church because it was so fascinating to me just the sheer number of people who would congregate there and the fact that they would listen to this sort of Mumford and Sons-esque indie rock music. Yeah I mean I grew up Catholic and I had that same situation where if I slept over a Christian friend's house I would go to church with them the next day and they had guitars and drums and things that were cool to the younger

crowd so I was like how come their church is so much fun? I'm going to this like Catholic traditional church where they play classical music and I pass out the first five minutes. It's marketing, it's marketing. In our SoulCycle episode we talked about how SoulCycle has become more like church but church has actually become more like SoulCycle and I found this vanity fair piece from 2019 where this Jewish reporter was going and visiting Mosaic one of these celebrity mega churches to try and understand the appeal and the pastor this very like quote unquote charismatic white guy was like okay if I can't convince you to convert to Christianity by coming to our church services at Mosaic can I take you to a SoulCycle class and he took him

to a SoulCycle class where the teacher was an evangelical Christian in hopes that that would convince him instead. It's funny that you say convince him because actually we're talking about converting religions here it's crazy that this priest literally thought that he could quote unquote convince someone to entirely switch religions that's something that you're born into or you go through a really really long process of deciding and doing research and choosing a faith because it calls to you that's not what faith is about you don't recruit people to attend you recruit people to believe. Totally and there have been allegations brought forth against these various mega churches there have been people who've worked there who said that it felt like working for a

corporation that's what these celebrity endorsers and the convincing or conversion is all about it's just marketing to them and you can hear it in the language I mean the language of these celebrity mega churches sounds like the language of a Silicon Valley startup they'll use buzzwords like join our intentional and authentic community of holistic missional Christ followers it's like all the same language they're treating it like a business. Yeah I found an article that said that they operate like a nightclub because they include like reserved seating for celebrities and then the ordinary attendees are in the back and so all of a sudden they're prioritizing people by their importance and that's not I don't know like I believe in God I think I don't think that's

what God would have wanted but the question here is do we think they're doing it because of the money or do we think they're doing it because they think that making Jesus cool will make people want to believe in Jesus? So even if they truly believe deep down that they're doing this because Christ would want them to and that's the reason why they'll say bait and switch LGBTQ plus people into thinking that this is an accepting community when it's really not or they will exploit people's labor the pastor might really believe in his soul that he's ultimately doing all of this to serve Christ but that paints him as a sort of prophet and that is the ultimate sign of a destructive cult like what's that quote that said in a cult the leader claims to talk to God in a religion

that person is dead it's going to be interesting to learn from our guests today because I think something that's important to talk about is the process of joining one of these mega churches so I think it's going to be interesting how they aside from obviously recruiting really famous people how they make you want to join and to see what the costs of joining are yeah and if there are any exit costs I'm so curious to learn from our guests where they get all this money from I know traditional churches of course people donate money I just wonder if there's more of a structural way of getting money out of regular people like what is the end game what are they trying to do here like are they trying to take over the entire world or are they just trying to have a religious

experience I'm just so confused like where does this power hunger come from and what's it directed at that's a great question what is the end game because I don't know I don't think they're going to be able to like get on the Instagram feed of a Hasidic Jewish person like they're not going to be able to convince the entire world to join their religion so I think they do I think they literally think that though but maybe not maybe they're just so blinded by their immediate goals which is like raise x amount of money that it blinds them from their ultimate purpose which is just to create a space worshiping their god I've said this before but like the word sacred literally means set aside sacred space should be set aside it shouldn't take over your entire life

and it shouldn't take over the lives of others we're not professionals on religions by any means so we wanted to bring on a guest that maybe knew a little bit more about the cult of celebrity megachurches and we can answer all these questions that we have to see if this is a cult or not so up next we're going to be talking to our guest Grace Semler Baldridge who is a musician media host and the creator of this incredible video docu series on refinery 29 called state of grace which talks about christianity in contemporary culture we're excited to talk to her about the cult of celebrity megachurches let's just jump right into it do you want to tell us who you are and your experiences with hipster megachurches or megachurches and how you developed an interest

in them sure well my name is grace baldridge and i'm a recording artist who records under my middle name which is semler but i've also worked in the documentary space and been a host on a series that was called state of grace which explored the intersection of faith and american life and of course you can't ignore the influence of white western evangelicalism in the united states today that was heavily present in the episodes so we covered abortion the death penalty conversion therapy religion and faith in schools and then our last episode was about the christian music industry which is strangely enough the industry that i sort of find myself in now because i've been writing music about my faith from a queer perspective so that's me my dad is an episcopal

priest i was raised in the rectory i grew up in belgium i should say i grew up in waterloo belgium and so i was raised in an affirming denomination but when it came to like youth group and mission trips that was typically outsourced to groups like young life and other american evangelicals that would come to belgium and put on churchy type things for the kids what could go wrong and my parents would send me off to those places that's how i was introduced to the unique brand of christian cruelty and exclusion that is the evangelical church today it's so funny talking about it in hindsight right when i was a kid i would always have friends who went to church camp and i was so jealous like i wanted to be a part of it and now i'm very grateful that i was not

oh yeah it's strange too because specifically young life something that i now know is part of their practice is that they really targeted obviously the popular kids at school so you'd have these young life leaders who did not have any kids that went to our school men predominantly that were in their 30s to 40s would just hang around campus figure out who the cool kids were and then invite them into these like pancake breakfasts and stuff and so that's how i started going i'm so glad that you brought this up because i talk about in my book how a common myth about the type of people who wind up in cults is that they're desperate and disturbed and intellectually deficient but why would a cult want someone like that they want winners yeah and so it makes sense

that they would target the popular kids well because by doing that literally our prom king and queen were the ones that they were like let's get them to pancake breakfast and so then i want to go to pancake breakfast because i don't know what i wanted to be i really was so lost but i think i wanted to be like prom king so i wanted to go to these breakfasts and like be in and and then you have these small group circles where you're with the prom queen who interestingly enough now the person i'm referring to is a good friend of mine who has since deconstructed and is like openly queer anyway i would be in a small group with this person and then i felt like i'm in the in circle because we're all confessing our innermost desires and like there's no reason for this person ordinarily

to bump into me in the hallway and say grace like i've really had this thing on my heart that i've been wrestling through but now at these weird young life pancake breakfasts we're all revealing our innermost secrets and i feel so included and that's all any high schooler really wants right is like a group of friends that they feel like they're really close with and like they have something that bonds them together like the secret and they open up to each other that's the the love bombing and such uh i could literally talk about this forever i'm so obsessed with the intersection of evangelicalism and our contemporary american culture which so emphasizes like individualism and personal brands which really conflicts with the ideology that your identity only serves christ

yada yada interesting stuff so let's pivot to a conversation about these hipster celebrity mega churches can you describe the culture of these mega churches like hill song mosaic etc what do you think is appealing about them and what sets them apart from other types of protestant churches well there are a few things that are at play one they do come from a charismatic tradition so a charismatic tradition means that they are playing on the charisma the personality the personal draw and brand of a pastor so even though they might say that like jesus is the one doing the work like it's jesus if we were to have like the guy from ferris bueller's day off that's like bueller verbatim say the exact same message that these mega church pastors are saying you would not be having the same

volume of people and sheer attention that they are amassing and they know that like it is about how they deliver the message so inherently it is about them and how they do it we love a star just like culturally especially in the united states and these pastors position themselves as stars look at the lighting look at the smoke machines it's a production yeah so there's that i also think that these pastors in these celebrity mega churches have benefited from their proximity their intentional proximity to celebrity two stars just this past weekend justin beaver was on stage next to juda smith two of the most successful wealthiest people justin beaver in the pop space and juda smith in the faith space that have ever existed on a stage i think it was at the staple

center juda smith is talking in his microphone about how jesus has saved justin beaver this like broken man and i don't want to invalidate how probably very real those feelings are for those two individuals but talking about how god has like blessed them in front of a crowd of people who will never ever imagine that sort of security and stability in their life and it's because of like the love of jesus so that is the prosperity gospel even if they're packaging it a little bit differently yeah so i think it's through their charismatic teaching and then i think it's the proximity to hollywood and celebrity and then i also think that that all ties into the prosperity gospel it all reeks of late stage capitalism gripping on yes the business of religion and a lot of people

are getting wise to that and being like wait a second jesus was poor as hell he hated money what are we doing yeah and you talking about justin beaver on stage that is essentially the macro version of someone cool going to hang out outside of a high school and inviting the cool kids to the pancake breakfast that's exactly what it is wow i hadn't like put that connection together but you're completely correct in that it is really the macro blown out version of when you target the popular kids to say look these people are tithing they're coming to our church gathering they're endorsing our organization yeah why aren't you like i mean justin beaver he's really he's got it together sure he's had his struggles but not in a way that will ever separate him from

living in total security stability financially secure in a happy marriage why wouldn't you trust us the funny thing about religion is that i feel like religious people lean into being like you and justin beaver are the same person so just lean into your prayers and you'll both be just as happy as each other yeah equally with with the exact amount of concerns like your student loan debt justin beaver isn't thinking about his student loan debt what's your problem so what do you think are some of the cultiest things about these churches anything from the marketing or celebrity endorsements to the rituals to the power structures well i think the power structure definitely can lean culty because oftentimes they keep it within the family so a lot of times

you'll have a head pastor and then underneath the junior pastor will be someone who is directly related oftentimes the like descendant of that head pastor so mosaic comes to mind in that regard and you see that along with hill song as well in hill song you have a similar sort of power structure where a lot of people who either were basically family members or actual family members are in that sort of line of succession really to i guess gain the throne yeah especially because so my dad is an episcopal priest and he went to divinity school like he has his masters in divinity and i don't know what the criteria is necessarily for a lot of the celebrity mega churches i think the criteria predominantly is like will put you through a course so basically you're not even getting

outside education i know that's how it was at mosaic you just go through mosaic college so you're not even getting an outside degree from somewhere else where you might be able to learn deeper context deeper meaning examine scripture in a new way they're like no no no we know how to examine scripture don't don't go anywhere else keep your money is good here and then you pay and go up into the structure oh that's just like the cult where my dad spent his teenagers which was called synonym and you weren't allowed to go to an outside school as a kid that also to me seems like an exit cost because after a certain point if you're only getting a type of education and not like a more universal education that limits your prospects for other careers oh totally this is a

generalization but in a hypothetical situation if you were to go to using them as again as an example like mosaic college get your degree from there from their teaching and then go to any mainline christian nomination be like well i have a degree from mosaic i guarantee you that they would be like you gotta you have to do something else because that's only good for mosaic like that's monopoly money anywhere else like that doesn't really help us great you can get a crowd going on hollywood boulevard with a transient sort of open door policy of congregants that are there for three years realize that it's all smoke and mirrors and leave but are you going to be with a congregation for 15 years unless you are literally a member of that family probably not i think also the marketing

is pretty similar because it's broad it's vague they do steer away from specific policy and i think also specific theology which is very strange because overtly they're christian but you'd be hard pressed to find like jesus and christ in the branding they'll say other things like freedom belonging inclusive yeah inclusive welcome it has to be a one-size-fits-all gospel to get as many people through the door and then the the flip of the switch though is that the theology is actually quite regressive when you get into it but they don't want you to know that i i mean i really think there's going to be a moment of reckoning because like speaking of the event yesterday at the staple center with all those celebrities on stage i don't know how many times i'm going

to make a video about this juda smith does not believe that queer people can or should get married or be baptized in an organization that he is the head of that he presides over how long does that scale for i mean chris pratt gets dragged on twitter basically every month for attending hill song and justin beaver and the kardashians and haley beaver have all been able to just sort of skirt by by attending an openly endorsing church home which is juda smith's organization that has the exact same policy with regards to lgbtq plus exclusion and they know you they know that right i don't know that they do because i think celebrities get a really different manual like they're because they're not serving they're not volunteering their time in the same way as

other parishioners will have to like people that i've spoken with when we were working on the show their volunteer hours were virtually a second job with the the amount of time that they're putting in and spending because it's all serving the kingdom so you shouldn't expect to get paid and things like that the beavers are not doing that like they're not like cleaning the toilet and i don't think they see the costs of the influence that they have because regular people like you mentioned have to give so much more to these communities to belong to the communities and all people see is they'll see one of the kardashians attended church home and they seemingly have a great relationship with the queer community so they surely would not attend a church that's

unaffirming they just don't know their due diligence and these organizations i they're churches but let's call them what they are they are like religious organizations they're businesses they hide their policy i was live on tiktok like three months ago where you can chat with church home live and you can ask them policy questions it's like fascinating especially when people are with you because people don't realize how much they will gaslight you and be evasive and not answer a question so i'm asking yes or no questions live to church homes like policy people because they like to feign that they have an open door policy like we have nothing to hide like ask us whatever and i'm like do you believe that being gay is a sin and they'll be like god loves everyone

and i'm like oh my gosh like this is crazy yeah but they'll answer specific other questions you can ask do you think that stealing is a sin they're like well it does say in the bible hear this and this and then when you turn it on issues of inclusion they've been pretty cagey on issues of racial justice i do think that they benefit from being so vague but i think that a tide is going to turn i think when these people start having kids and then their kids are coming out and wondering about the boundaries to inclusion then i don't know if they will make a definitive statement which i think would be the right thing to do and hold themselves accountable for the regressive policies of the past or if they'll just pretend like they were always inclusive the whole time which we know

is not true when you join a cult you usually are reeled in by like levels of participation and so my question is with religion and these new age churches how do they paint these different levels to keep you in are there different levels that you can become a part of that's a great question because they're absolutely are and this was something that i wasn't quite familiar with until we were interviewing people for different episodes so you'll have like the head figure who's like the charismatic leader of the church and then you'll have maybe let's say a few pastors junior pastors underneath him that offer their own unique brand of charismatic preaching but distinctly still within the same universe as the head preacher you're not going to hear a sermon that would contradict

something that you would have heard from the head pastor a week prior then levels underneath that it's like you have members of the worship band and you like worship band is like front and center so being on that worship team is pretty elite level you're getting to be up on the stage it's something that i know for a lot of people was hoarded over them friends of mine that were basically under studies that were always sort of like like let on let on let on that's totally what it was like if you just do this they've really been like liking this to kind of keep you on the hook for a while but then there are other like there's leadership in the parking attendance and so they do create like these tiers yeah and like who's doing the ushering to get you into the church who's organizing the

small groups organizing the fundraising drive the tides and so within each system you want to go up through those ranks i mean it now that i'm saying it it kind of outlines like a pyramid like a pyramid oh no but yeah basically there is like a power structure that you can join into whether or not you even want to be a preacher we are so incentive based so many of us just as people what's the next goal what's the next level i want to get to the next rung and so a lot of these churches create that where there really shouldn't be i mean it should just be like okay parking how let's just figure it out yeah it should be a logistical thing yeah like a logistical parking but then you'll have team leaders that are like i'm the leader of parking or i'm like the

leader of the ushering and i'm the leader of the greeters the people who are greeting you and then there'll be people underneath the head greeters and you are working to prove that you can be a head greeter and once you're involved in it then it's your entire headspace and it's your whole friend group we're saying before while we were chatting that soul cycle has become more like church but church has become more like soul cycle and this reminds me that like church has become gamified yeah it's about finding favor less with god which i think you find favor with god when you get right with who the creator created you to be that that was my experience so long as i was fighting myself and i was closeted i was the furthest i'd ever been from god yeah as soon as i was able to accept

who i was created to be was when i had this connection to the divine and an interest in scripture however in these church environments you're not searching for a greater connection to the divine it's like a greater connection and favor within this community yeah this is so insightful but on a more lighthearted note we wanted to play a little game with you so so ready for a game yay we're gonna bring it home with a game this is a game we sometimes play on our podcast it's called culty quotes there are gonna be a few rounds and here's how you play we're each going to alternate reading you a series of quotes each quote is either going to be lyrics from a hipster christian song or writings from a notorious cult leader and you're gonna have to

guess okay okay great i'll go first are you ready i'm ready i've been training for this my whole life i'm excited here we go i belong to the kingdom of god that's my country that's a hipster christian song no that was a quote from the cult leader david berg the children of god yeah you know there's a christian band called for king and country i was like that's got to be their like name brand song no that was the children of god's notorious leader david berg who wanted to make christ sexy for the new 70s generation yikes who doesn't okay i would join your cult race thanks round number two is this a hipster christian lyric or a cult leader quote the spirit of the lord is upon me to bind up the brokenhearted and set the captives free all right i hope i don't sound like a

broken record but that's a hipster christian song you're right yeah well all of this is gonna sound like a hipster christian song for me because i am that like that's what i grew up with that's your bias and that's okay yeah that was from uh the song kingdom glory by ryan ellis all right so for the last quote i'm ready is this a hipster christian song lyric or a writing from a cult leader sticks and stones may break my bones but only you can make these bones come alive that sounds like such a hipster christian lyric to me again like his bones come alive that's also from the bible where it's like breathe on these old bones like they're dry yeah but so many cults start with the bible i know they do don't they that's what this is all about really i still think it's a song

lyric you are correct you're right you're right ding ding ding who okay that's that's a song called sticks and stones by an artist called cas yeah that sounds about right i'm gonna have to do some research on these christian songs dude they slap they're super soothing i mean the chord progression is scientifically soothing if you just don't think about the specifics of what you would need to do and who you would need to become to belong to the group then it's very soothing the christian music industry is so specific on what you can and can't say i talked to an artist they were not allowed to say the word hell in one of their songs which you'd think would be allowed because christians love condemning people to hell like they love talking about it even though christians love

the judgment day imagery you can't actually reference it directly in in their music that's like probably why they got so mad that little nazi x was like hey they hated it they were like come on like that's our thing they're so comfortable talking about the place where other people are gonna go according to them and then they get mad when little nazi x is like well i'm gonna throw party in hell they're like no he's having too much fun hell is supposed to suck and now and now like all of gen z is like let's go to fucking hell we love hell grace this has been a true delight in every possible way where can people keep up with you in your work sure you can follow me on all my social media platforms at grace baldridge and you can listen to my music wherever you

stream music look up my artist named similar scm l er and i have new music coming out this fall i just sold out my first headline show in los angeles but hopefully they're gonna need more shows in la in the future amazing thank you so much grace bye see ya so isa out of the three cult categories live your life watch your back and get the fuck out what do we think about hipster mega churches i don't want to sound like a broken record on this podcast and i think we will have all kinds of cults but actually i was gonna say hipster mega churches are a watch your back but i kind of feel like they need to be a get the fuck out i agree oh really yeah well when you were gonna say watch your back i was about to be like disagree and i caught myself i caught myself yeah i think

the light that grace shed on the dynastic quality of the leadership how they always keep it in the family and they're trying to suck people into the levels but you can never take down the person at the top yeah because someone that they're related to is just going to usurp them i think that makes a power structure super predatory i think it's a get the fuck out i completely agree and also when it affects your belief system that is a skeleton to the way that you live your life it's really dangerous everything the emotional exploitation the labor exploitation she was talking about i don't think it's the best place to get your spiritual fix yeah exactly because there are other options out there that said if mosaic wants to endorse our podcast we'll read about yeah they

have the money that's our show thanks so much for listening we'll be back with a new cult next week but in the meantime stay culty but not too culty sounds like a cult was created produced and edited by amanda montel and isa medina our theme music is by kasey colby and if you like this episode feel free to give us a rating and review on apple podcasts