Conclusion: Havens of Health or Habitats for the Prosperity Gospel?

The dominant assessment of megachurches, in both popular culture and scholarship, is that they tend to be havens of commerce and exploitation, and purveyors of the prosperity gospel. After sifting through the data on members in twelve representative American megachurches, looking at people who were longtime members and leaders, those who were new members, and those that were just visiting, we found something quite different. We found wells of goodness, satisfaction, generosity, and inspiration. We found religious organizations that have a certain genius for meeting the needs of what Durkheim called homo duplex. Megachurches are organizations that meet the desire of humans to flourish as individuals and to do it in a group—an equipoise that is rare but deeply satisfying.