What does it mean when a church is “non-denominational”? What is the relation between non-denominational churches and established denominations? In what ways does the designation of being non-denominational encode information about a church’s values and beliefs, its demographics, or its position on hot-button cultural issues? Dan tackles these questions in this week’s episode.
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Hello and welcome to It's In The Code, a series on the podcast Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Dan Miller, professor of religion and social thought at Landmark College.
I am your host.
I want to begin, as always, by thanking those of you who listen, those of you who support us in so many different ways.
We are an indie program, can't do it without you.
We have no external funding, no institutional support.
So thank you all, all the patrons, people who support us just by listening to the ads, people who reach out and talk to us, and on that regard, with specific reference to this series, always want to hear from people, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com, danielmillerswaj, S-W-A-J at gmail.com.
Love to hear the ideas, the feedback, the comments, anything you want to share with me, love to hear it.
Spent a good chunk of my day yesterday trying to get caught up on some emails.
Didn't get caught up on all of them, but got caught up on a lot of them, which means that I spent a lot of the day just reading things from all of you, and it meant so much.
Some great topic ideas, reminders of things, some really encouraging words, some Points of criticism and disagreement, which I also welcome.
So, Daniel Miller Swag, DanielMillerSWAJ at gmail.com.
Keep the ideas coming.
We'll keep the series going as long as the ideas are there.
Jumping in from that, a topic today that was sort of, I've had it on my list.
I've heard about it.
But as I say, yesterday, I not only got caught up on some emails, but I went back through some emails and sort of my topics list and things like that.
And one of them is an idea for today that I think is pretty basic, but I realized from hearing from people that it might seem basic to me, or if you sort of know the contours of American religion or American Christianity might be basic, but if not, maybe not.
And as with all the things that we look at, there's also some work So what I want to talk about is the idea of what does it mean if a church is quote non-denominational.
think can be overlooked.
So what I want to talk about is the idea of what does it mean if a church is, quote, non-denominational?
I've had a lot of people who email with that question.
I know I have students who ask that question.
What is a non-denominational church?
And so forth.
So I want to start with the basics, which is what is a denomination?
And again, this is something that students often ask me about, and it's an idea that I realize is not familiar to everybody.
So a good metaphor of this is money.
We talk about denominations of monetary bills, right?
Well, what are those?
They're the different kinds of bills.
$1, $5, $10, $20, whatever.
I never have bills that are bigger than 20, so, you know, those are the ones that occupy my life.
But those are different denominations of currency, right?
They're just different kinds of the same currency, U.S.
dollars.
It's the same thing with denominations.
In Christian terms, denominations are the different sort of kinds, or if you like, brands, of Christianity.
Now, something to say here, right?
The language of denominations originates in Christianity.
It's sometimes used to apply to other traditions, like, say, Judaism.
In my view, it's just a little dicey.
I think it's a term, it's a pretty Christian term, and I get a little bit nervous, and for technical reasons, applying it to other traditions.
It's just something to know and to maybe think about.
So we're largely talking about Christianity.
Our focus, Christianity in the U.S.
There are denominations in other places as well.
But it names the different sort of kinds of Christianity, but these are usually formal and institutional in nature, okay?
And this is the thing that I think the average layperson doesn't think that much about, right?
If you ride around and you see a Southern Baptist Church, the Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.
There's a whole institutional framework to that that most people aren't going to think about, right?
So denominations typically have a legal status, meaning there's some sort of incorporated entity.
They're usually registered, if they're religious in nature, as non-profit entities.
They usually have, along with this, a formal organizational structure.
They'll have a national, or sometimes, depending on the denomination, an international head office.
With a kind of organizational flowchart, in different levels, there might be the head office, the head denominational agency, and then the U.S., for example, can be broken down into regions, and then there might be states within that.
And then within the state, there may be subdivisions within that administrative structure.
That's what we're talking about, an administrative structure.
They're often going to have kind of a registry or a list or a directory of congregations or churches that are affiliated with them.
Some of them, if you go to like the websites, especially the large denominations, they'll have like a church, you know, find a church kind of place where you can put it in.
You can put in your state or your zip code and churches that are affiliated with that denomination.
You know, maybe in your zip code or within a 50 mile radius or whatever, you know, whatever filters you have set, those will show up, right?
They often, in the case of larger and more established denominations, they will have publishing houses.
They'll have educational institutions.
They may have colleges and universities, seminaries for training clergy.
Some of them will have, you know, K through 12 educational institutions.
They might have hospitals and other kinds of agencies of different kinds, other buildings, services, what have you.
And they often, this is the final sort of thing, is they often have credentialing and training requirements for clergy.
Now, I should say, like, this is a sort of, the sociologist Mox Weber would have called this an ideal type.
Some denominations don't have all of these features.
Not all of them do.
Some denominations, for example, don't have requirements for clergy credentialing.
Some denominations don't have big publishing houses.
But I think the thing that makes a denomination a denomination is often this notion of it's a legally recognized entity, has a formal structure, and so forth.
Okay?
So that's what denominations are.
Now, get a little more complicated, right?
Denominations are a more fine-grained kind of division than the larger branches of the Christian family trees.
So the big ones that we know about, especially when it comes to, say, Western and certainly American Christianity, the two main ones are Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
Well, Roman Catholic Church, RCC, is the largest denomination in the U.S.
It is its own denomination, okay?
Within Protestantism, though, there are lots and lots and lots of denominations.
And people might know names, if you drive around and you see churches, you'll see names like Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, and any number of other things.
Those are sort of branches on that Protestant, I guess, what, offshoots of the branch, the Protestant branch of the Christian family tree.
But there are multiple denominations within each of those.
So there are lots of Presbyterian denominations, there are lots of Lutheran denominations, there are lots of Methodist denominations, there are lots of Baptist denominations.
So the first thing to know is when we talk about denominations, we are talking about the Catholic Church, but that's its own thing.
Typically, we're talking about a Protestant phenomenon.
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Why?
Well, Protestants have always been a fractious group, right?
Protestantism emerged out of a split from the Roman Catholic Church, and Protestants have been splitting and arguing with each other and forming new denominations ever since.
Most existing denominations today emerged out of splits within older denominations, and so there are dozens and dozens of Christian denominations in the United States.
From big ones, like the one I talked about, the Southern Baptist Convention, down to really, really small denominations that you may never have heard of unless you were, you know, a scholar or somebody studying those denominations.
And new ones continue to take shape.
It's going on right now with United Methodist Church in the U.S.
basically splitting and forming a new denomination or sort of quasi-denominational entity, right?
So that's what denominations are, right?
Sort of what brand of Christianity do you belong to?
If you're a Presbyterian, are you part of the Presbyterian Church USA or the Presbyterian Church in America?
Two different denominations.
If you're Baptist, that's cool, but are you Southern Baptist or Independent Baptist or Missionary Baptist or American Baptist?
Those are the denominations, okay?
And if it seems a little arcane, that reflects our times.
There was a time when Christians in America identified much more strongly with their denominations than they do now.
Not just the broader branches, not just I'm Presbyterian or Lutheran, that was always a big thing, but like what kind of Presbyterian, what kind of Lutheran?
American religious adherence generally, and Christians specifically, identify less and less with denominations than in the past.
Why is that?
A lot of reasons take us outside the scope of this, but part of it is just the broader anti-institutionalism within the U.S., I think, is a piece of that.
But this is so much the case that it can sometimes be difficult to find out what denomination a church is part of.
And some clergy will be sort of actively cagey about sharing that information.
An example, and I've encountered this, it's anecdotal, but I think it's real and it holds and it could be represented in other places.
The Southern Baptist Convention, as the name implies, emerged in the American South, but it has churches in all 50 states.
Some Southern Baptist-affiliated churches In, let's just say, very non-Southern areas, maybe out on the West Coast, or like when I lived in Seattle, or I live in New England now, and there are Southern Baptist churches here, and some of them, they're in a place that's very progressive, not a lot of evangelical presence, certainly not a lot of Southern Baptist presence, And some of them won't tell you very openly that they are Southern Baptists.
They see it as a hindrance for lots of reasons.
There's one locally that I was researching for a class that I was teaching, and I had a hunch.
I was like, I think this might be a Southern Baptist church, but I'm not sure.
I could find nothing anywhere on the website where it said this.
I looked up the pastor.
Took me a while, but I eventually found the pastor's credentials.
It was a Southern Baptist seminary.
Doesn't mean that the person's Southern Baptist.
Lots of conservative evangelicals train at Southern Baptist seminaries.
It's like, okay, that's maybe.
What I had to do was go to, I believe the Southern Baptist, it's a regional agency for New England because there aren't very many Southern Baptists here.
I had to go to the denominational page and do that kind of church directory search, and I found the church there in their directory of Southern Baptist churches.
It's the only way that I was able to confirm the denominational affiliation of the church, right?
So some churches, you're driving around and you see, you know, First Presbyterian Church, and down on the sign in parentheses on the bottom, I say PCUSA.
That's the denomination, Presbyterian Church USA.
Some will have it front and center, The American South, lots of places you would drive around, it'll say, First Southern Baptist Church.
No mystery there.
But sometimes churches don't want to tell you their denominational affiliation.
I think it reflects this broader American sense of kind of anti-institutionalism, as well as a certain, within a certain kind of Christianity, we'll come to this, of valorizing of not being affiliated with a denomination.
Okay?
So all that, that's the professory me talking about denominations, what denominations are, why is that important?
Because we want to talk about a non-denominational church.
What does that mean?
The basic idea is really simple.
It's an independent congregation that is not formally affiliated with any denomination.
That's it.
It means that it is its own independent entity.
Now, I can hear the emails now.
Those of you that are familiar with American Protestantism are going to email and say, well, what about groups like the Baptists?
The Baptists have denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention, but within the Southern Baptist Convention, every church is formally independent.
So it's called a denomination of cooperating churches, that they choose to band together into a denomination, but they're independent congregations.
Yes, some kinds of what we call ecclesiology—theories or doctrines of the Church—understand the Church as independent.
But a non-denominational Church is one that is not affiliated with the denomination.
Even within some Baptist circles where affiliation is sort of voluntary, you choose to band together and be a part of, say, the Southern Baptist Convention.
Non-denominational churches are completely independent, not affiliated with a denomination.
Right?
That's the basic meaning.
It's simple enough.
But as always, we're interested in sort of the broader patterns and significance of this.
Because there are some patterns to note here, right?
On one hand, the idea of a non-denominational church sounds very unique and individualistic.
Every church is its own entity and so forth.
But the telling point, the interesting point to know, and I think this is part of understanding just the code of American religion, right, is that most non-denominational churches, a vast majority, are theologically conservative or evangelical, right?
Or even fundamentalist, if you want to make that distinction between evangelicals and fundamentalists, right?
The vast majority.
You might find, you could find, you can find anything in the American religious landscape.
You could find some liberal or progressive independent non-denominational churches.
But for the most part, they are theologically conservative or evangelical.
And so if a church uses that language, the language of being non-denominational, again, you go to their websites and look around, they might say, we're an independent non-denominational fellowship, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It is almost certainly theologically conservative.
And that is going to tell us, if you've listened to this series, if you've listened to our podcast, you know we talk about this a lot, that's going to tell us all kinds of things about the church's likely demographics, its positions on hot-button social issues, its political stance, and so forth.
Not always.
I always get the email from people who point out the exceptions to the rule.
Fair enough, right?
It is not universally true.
Statistics are not written in stone, and if you say 80% of some denomination is X, Y, or Z, it means that 20% isn't, right?
So there are exceptions to that.
But most of the time, if I were a betting person, I'd put money down that I know a lot about that church if it's labeled itself as non-denominational, right?
Additionally, I think this reflects, again, that kind of anti-institutional nature of American society in general.
Most non-denominational churches are not that old.
Compared to those within established denominations, you're typically not going to find a 50, 60-year-old, let alone 100 or 200-year-old non-denominational church, okay?
They also range in size from a few members, a few members who maybe got disgruntled in a church they were part of and broke off to start their own independent church, All the way up to megachurches with tens of thousands of members.
And some of these megachurches will form new churches.
You get these kind of church networks that are almost like little mini denominations in their own right, right?
So you can get a lot of diversity in size and structure, but the theology is almost always conservative, and that typically is going to tell us a lot about the demographics.
For a lot of non-denominational churches, and this is another aspect, it's also typically a source of pride that they are not denominationally affiliated.
For them, their independence, as they see it, their non-denominational nature is a sign that their beliefs and their practices are not determined by others, right?
On one hand, as I say, this reflects the theology of what the church is.
There are different Christian understandings of kind of what makes a church a church.
But I think it also tells us why non-denominational churches tend to be theologically conservative.
And here's the reason.
I've talked about this before, both here and in the weekly roundups that we do, but conservative Protestant theology, right?
And this lines up with the origins of Protestantism itself, right?
Conservative Protestant theology is obsessed with doctrinal purity.
Conservative Protestants tend to be what we call Biblicists, right?
They use the Bible in a certain way and believe things about it.
If you're interested in this, check out earlier episodes I did.
There was one called Bible Church, and there was a two-part episode on being biblical and what that means, right?
That's these churches.
They believe that Christians' beliefs ought to come only from the Bible and not human or worldly institutions, including denominations.
So they often view themselves as having not affiliated with denominations because they have a purer or truer understanding of the teachings of the Bible.
So a lot of conservative Protestants start independent non-denominational churches because it reflects their specific theology and their understanding of the Bible, okay?
So that's some of what you know.
It's the kind of thing that if I know a church is non-denominational, I know some other things about it.
I think I know a lot about their theology.
I probably know a lot about their demographics.
And so the language of being non-denominational is another code That communicates a lot of things, that expresses some things, and if we know that code, we can begin to understand some more about it.
It's typically a claim to theological purity.
It is a claim to independence.
It's a claim to discern or possess a truth that others don't have.
There is a reason, often doctrinal, that these churches don't affiliate with the denomination.
It is also a claim to exclusivity.
It is a claim that they possess the truth in a way that others do not.
Not just other Americans or other humans, but even other Christians.
Right?
But here's the other piece, right?
If that's part of reading the code, here's another piece of decoding that I think is really important here, okay?
Because on one hand, it's a very, to me, a very stereotypically American phenomenon, reflecting on a kind of congregational level, the valorization of individuality, the claim to be unique and independent, the claim to be quote-unquote authentic and so forth.
But as with American culture broadly, these are mostly mythical or fantastical assumptions on these churches.
Just like most of us, most of us Americans who view ourselves as radically unique and individual and so, you know, absolutely different from everybody else, when in fact there are lots of patterns that emerge that we're all subject to, right?
We all share group identities by which we can be identified and understood.
It's the same thing with these churches, right?
Their theology, as I said, it's conservative-Protestant.
Their theology tends to be very similar and not all that unique or individual at all, generally speaking.
In fact, they're often influenced by various forms of Baptist theology specifically, and that makes sense.
Baptists have always been some of the most independent-minded denominations and congregations, But some of these, it's not universal, but if you go to a bunch of non-denominational churches and you look at their statement of faith, not only will that statement of faith look virtually identical for all of them, oftentimes they will cite something like the Baptist faith and message, which is the statement of faith in the Southern Baptist Convention.
And if I hammer away on the Baptist a lot, it's because that's the tradition that I know I'm most familiar with.
Prominent, another sort of pattern, another element of the pattern of these churches, the way that they actually live in the world, is that prominent non-denominational churches, particularly in urban and suburban areas, often have a similar even cookie-cutter feel.
And I'm going to direct folks back to another episode I did a while back, a long time ago, called Cool Kid Church.
Most, not all, but most of those cool kid churches, number one, they feel the same.
It's by design, right?
It is to be comforting to a certain kind of primarily white, middle-class, suburban family who comes to the church.
They tend to have a very similar kind of feel and a similar structure and you could walk, you could blindfold somebody and take them into, you know, one or another in different states or places and they would all feel kind of the same.
Like we're going into a McDonald's in a different state, right?
So there are some real patterns here.
Despite the fact of their claims to be independent and unique and not denominationally defined and so forth, there are some real patterns and similarities.
It is not true of all of them.
Again, there are exceptions, and I think a huge exception here or fracture point would be really rural churches as opposed to more urban or suburban churches.
That's one, okay?
But a model here is probably independent voters in the U.S.
You know, I'm always thinking about politics and elections, and we talk a lot in the U.S.
about so-called independent voters.
Why do I say so-called?
Because social scientists who study Voters and voting patterns will tell us that most people who are registered as independents vote reliably with one of the two political parties, right?
When it comes to their voting record, they're not very independent at all.
There are independent undecided voters who swing back and forth, but most vote consistently Republican or Democratic.
Despite their description of being independent, despite people's perception that they are independent and uninfluenced by political parties in the way that politically affiliated folks are, in their practices, They're often relatively indiscernible from card-carrying Republicans or Democrats.
It's the same thing with non-denominational churches, right?
Most non-denominational churches, if you were to look at what they teach, what they preach, and things like that, they're going to look pretty indiscernible from large evangelical Protestant denominations.
So, non-denominationalism, that's what it means.
The basic idea is it's a church that is not part of one of these formal institutions called denominations.
But there's also some decoding that we can do.
If you know a church is non-denominational, you know it's probably theologically conservative.
You can probably make relatively safe assumptions about demographics and political positions and so forth.
And I think it's important to know, the scholar of religion in me thinks it's important to know, that there are some real similarities and almost defining features of certainly suburban and urban non-denominational churches.
Gotta wrap this up.
As always, thank you for listening.
There are a lot of things you could be doing right now besides listening to my series, so thank you for listening.
Thank you for the support.
So encouraging to get caught up on some of those emails and to just hear what folks have to say.
So keep the ideas coming.
Ideas for series.
Questions, requests for resources, ideas for additional topics.
I take them all to heart.
I'm paying attention to all of them, even if I don't get a chance to respond to everybody.
Please keep them coming.
Daniel Miller Swaj, danielmillerswaj at gmail.com.
And as always, as always, please be well until we meet again.
