ABSTRACT
The story we have told is grim. If we are correct, the intimate relationship that has developed between contemporary spirituality and the value form of the commodity has formed a substance more toxic than any other in history. It may therefore be valuable for us to bear in mind, first, that social formations are never as uniform, nor as totalizing in practice as they may appear in theory; and, second, that the ‘community unto death’, while real, forms only the most extreme experience of contemporary religious subjectivity and practice. Short of death on the battlefield, contemporary religious practitioners have rediscovered and have themselves created a wide variety of ways in which the sublime can set itself over against its own material form of appearance. For example, sociologist Donald E. Miller has conducted a comprehensive study of the two most powerful and influential brand-name Protestant mega-churches to emerge over the past three decades: the Vineyard and Calvary. Miller restricts the bulk of his analysis to communities in the United States. Still, some might be surprised to learn how many mega-churches Vineyard and Calvary organizers have ‘planted’ elsewhere in the world: over 270, including twenty in Australia, fifty-two in Canada, twenty-nine in England, thirteen in New Zealand, and eighteen in South Africa.1 Obviously, however, even these numbers pale when set over against the more than 1,020 Vineyard (406) and Calvary (614) fellowships in the United States.2
