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Big Tents and Their Demise

Historically, congregations have acted as “Big Tents” within their communities. This is not just in terms of being the “only game in town.” Rather, congregations were, to some degree, places where ideological differences were checked at the door and the worship of God took place with people of all political views sitting in the pews together. The success of Big Tent churches was wedded to concepts like geographic location and the strength of denominationalism; congregants flocked to their local houses of worship and stayed loyal to their shared values and identities. The Big Tent’s two main tentpoles were shared location and shared denominational identity. American congregations were neighborhood-based for people who shared many other characteristics such as social class, ethnicity, and education.

However, as the twentieth century progressed, the two tentpoles began to weaken. The first tentpole, shared location of a congregation’s members, continued to matter in part, but transportation advances—through a rise in personal vehicle ownership and highway infrastructure —changed the degree to which proximity was such an important factor in attending a church. These changes in transportation infrastructure fed American consumerism, especially amplifying the idea of consumer choice, and led to the growth of the very American concept of “church shopping.” People could now easily choose where they worshipped. And yet, even as transportation options increased, even as urban areas grew and suburbs developed, the Big Tent concept was still widely prevalent.

The other tentpole, denominational identity, also weakened, even before the rise of nondenominational congregations. Ethnic ties and shared denominational doctrines began to loosen. Members questioned their affiliation with a specific body. If you no longer knew what being a Presbyterian meant or was supposed to mean, why would it matter if you were a member of a Presbyterian congregation? With the decline of denominational hierarchies, American consumers found they had even more options available to them. That meant trying different denominations. It meant finding congregations that offered them various benefits (e.g., different worship times, children’s activities). Suddenly, there was nothing stopping anyone from going anywhere they wanted, when they wanted. If the Great Sorting has an origin, it is here.

Coupled with transportation changes, this marked a sea change for congregations as “local” organizations operating under a shared Big Tent. Congregations became more and more likely to be full of people who shared cultural and ideological views. This fed polarization, but was also caused by it, in a self-reinforcing cycle. Indiana is home to a prime example of a large, weakening denomination, the United Methodist Church, whose leadership took a position on human sexuality that many of its members disagreed with. The ensuing split shows how particular and “sorted” most congregations already were, or, put another way, how few of them had even the remnants of a Big Tent strategy.

There are countless other examples of denominations (and nondenominational Big Tents) that have separated, split, or sorted based on polarizing decisions around LGBTQ+ inclusion, racial reconciliation, pandemic responses, political leanings, or scriptural interpretations. As part of the consumeristic nature of congregations, members no longer choose a church solely based on location or denomination (or even doctrine) but also about the personal positions of those who stand at the pulpit or sit next to them in the pews.

The Complexity of Cultural Redoubts

This is a transformative moment for congregations. Houses of worship have long been considered Big Tents but the cultural polarization driving the Great Sorting has led to congregations instead becoming “cultural redoubts,” places where only those of the same political bent gather together in worship. Such siloing has immense implications for wider society, not just from a religious standpoint but also from the continuation of common cultural institutions and experiences. If progressives and conservatives can no longer worship together, how can they do anything else together?

While the emergence of cultural redoubts might be our new normal, one of the driving questions for us is how all of this is actually affecting congregations. Not just in the sorting out of members but in the ability of congregations to serve both their members and their wider communities. Regardless of whether the Big Tent can be resurrected or bridges can be made between the redoubts, the tapestry of issues needs to be explored and discussions need to be held. No matter where people end up being sorted, congregations are not facing these issues in isolation nor is what is happening to them (and us) occurring in a vacuum.

The polarizing issues that divide us are not felt equally in each of these redoubts nor in the same manner between them. This is not to say there is no overlap—if anything, our initial research shows just how complicated and intersecting these topics are. In our discussions and interviews to date, we note a plethora of topics congregations identify—sometimes as external forces, sometimes playing out within their walls—as polarizing issues of interest. One of the first things we have discovered is that such issues do not play out “in the field” the way they often seem to do in academic circles. The world, as it turns out, is full of complexity. It may not lead to a revival of a Big Tent, but it may allow the redoubts to better understand each other.

Jason Lantzer

Jason Lantzer serves as the Assistant Director of the Butler University Honors Program. A historian by training, his research and writing interests generally center on religion, politics, and law, He is the author of eight books, including Dwight Eisenhower & the Holocaust (DeGruyter, 2023) and Mainline Christianity: The Past and Future of America’s Majority Faith (NYU, 2012), as well as numerous book chapters and articles. A three-time graduate of Indiana University (BA, MA, PhD), he has contributed to both Religion and Urban Culture 1.0 and RUC 2.0.