Publisher's Synopsis
The Routledge Handbook of Megachurches provides a survey of global megachurch phenomena, with an international slate of authors introducing existing and emerging research on a wide variety of relevant topics.
Over the past decade, the field of megachurch studies has matured and become global in its scope and orientation. The Handbook offers 33 chapters by top scholars in the field, focusing in particular on:
- The location, demographic nature, and transnational connections of megachurches.
- Megachurch worship, hermeneutics, and theology (in theory and practice).
- Megachurch institutional dynamics.
- The various ways that megachurches have both influenced and been influenced by their social contexts in terms of class, age, gender, sexuality, and pop culture.
The Handbook's interdisciplinary orientation makes it essential reading for sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, media specialists, pop culture observers, business strategists, leadership consultants, marketing analysts, scholars of religion, and Christian historians, theologians, and missiologists. Experienced scholars of megachurches will gain valuable insight into aspects of megachurch research beyond their own specializations. Scholars new to the field will find the chapters useful as signposts for where to begin their own academic exploration. Christian pastors and laypeople will learn more about this increasingly prominent and influential form of their faith.
