Due to its contemporary style and employment of technological advances, The Basement's service resembles a rock concert more than a traditional church service. (Photo courtesy The Basement)
Matt Pitt overdosed at a University of Alabama football game. “I’ll never forget what happened one night,” he said as he relayed his history to a Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) audience. “I had had a long night of drugs and alcohol, and my parents called me the next morning and said, ‘Matt, we’re coming to see you.’” He had told his parents (especially his mother, whom he describes as a “prayin,’ Jesus-freak lovin,’ I’m talkin’ about she woke up eatin,’ breathin’ Jesus” woman) that he had been attending Bible studies and was a good student, when in reality drugs had become “like, a lifestyle.” Pitt collapsed while climbing the steps of the stadium, and his parents had him rushed to the closest emergency room where doctors revealed the severity of their son’s condition—he could have died if he had not made it there in time. He awoke in the hospital and thought: “How did I go from there to here?
In a moment of evangelical testimonial spirit he explained to TBN viewers how he “realized that day that God will allow you to become what you hate, in order to hate what you become.” Very shortly after his overdose, Pitt transformed from local drug dealer into local religious celebrity. He started a Bible study group for his friends in the basement of his parents’ house, and eventually hundreds of young adults flocked to see him. Their services moved to a church that seats 7,500 people, and “The Basement” (named for the place of its origin) officially became a Birmingham religious phenomenon. By 2010, The Basement gatherings had grown to well over five thousand members and are currently housed in the Church of the Highlands, a mega-church with an average weekend attendance of over twelve thousand. Although Pitt’s story is sensational and his style unconventional, The Basement is just one part of a longer religious narrative, beginning with early American revivalism and reinvigorated by the megachurch movement in the 1970s.
The Basement borrows from a religious past and adjusts it to fit the spiritual needs of contemporary southern Christians. Instead of simply rejecting the old order and completely uprooting religious practices, megachurches like The Basement transform somewhat staid spiritual traditions into more palatable religious expressions for their mostly middle-class, suburban congregants. For instance, Matt Pitt’s preaching has been characterized as a “vocal machine gun,” but it retains a cadence that mimics that of famous revivalist preachers of American religious history. After he attempts to moonwalk like Michael Jackson across the stage, Pitt shifts into a different role. He claims that as God was growing The Basement, God was also making him into “an evangelist” and the “ministry into a high intense evangelism ministry.” Like George Whitefield of Great Awakening renown, Pitt uses emotive language to prod sinners towards deliverance. He draws on the power of preachers like Billy Sunday, relating a spiritual message to temporal examples that are uncomplicated and easy to understand. Sunday used baseball as a spiritual analogy; Pitt uses SEC football, secular music, and MTV-influenced videos to promote his message. Borrowing from the practices of Aimee Semple McPherson, he also relies on modern technology to project his ideas to any and all who will listen. In one spontaneous moment, these various evangelical forces converge on The Basement stage.
With strobe lights flashing and video cameras rolling, Pitt engages his followers in a call and response routine shaped from evangelical ritual:
Pitt: “Here at The Basement, we are not perfect, we are just...”
Audience: “FORGIVEN!”
Pitt: “We are just...”
Audience: “FORGIVEN!”
Pitt: “We are just...”
Audience: “FORGIVEN!”
The Basement bills itself as the “HOTTEST CLUB around,” but it is more than a club; it shares a spirit with past religious movements and the liturgy that it uses is founded on the legacies of those movements.
The Basement borrows from a religious past and adjusts it to fit the spiritual needs of contemporary southern Christians. Instead of simply rejecting the old order and completely uprooting religious practices, megachurches like The Basement transform somewhat staid spiritual traditions into more palatable religious expressions for their mostly middle-class, suburban congregants. For instance, Matt Pitt’s preaching has been characterized as a “vocal machine gun,” but it retains a cadence that mimics that of famous revivalist preachers of American religious history. After he attempts to moonwalk like Michael Jackson across the stage, Pitt shifts into a different role. He claims that as God was growing The Basement, God was also making him into “an evangelist” and the “ministry into a high intense evangelism ministry.” Like George Whitefield of Great Awakening renown, Pitt uses emotive language to prod sinners towards deliverance. He draws on the power of preachers like Billy Sunday, relating a spiritual message to temporal examples that are uncomplicated and easy to understand. Sunday used baseball as a spiritual analogy; Pitt uses SEC football, secular music, and MTV-influenced videos to promote his message. Borrowing from the practices of Aimee Semple McPherson, he also relies on modern technology to project his ideas to any and all who will listen. In one spontaneous moment, these various evangelical forces converge on The Basement stage.
With strobe lights flashing and video cameras rolling, Pitt engages his followers in a call and response routine shaped from evangelical ritual:
Pitt: “Here at The Basement, we are not perfect, we are just...”
Audience: “FORGIVEN!”
Pitt: “We are just...”
Audience: “FORGIVEN!”
Pitt: “We are just...”
Audience: “FORGIVEN!”
The Basement bills itself as the “HOTTEST CLUB around,” but it is more than a club; it shares a spirit with past religious movements and the liturgy that it uses is founded on the legacies of those movements.
The Basement borrows from a religious past and adjusts it to fit the spiritual needs of contemporary southern Christians. Instead of simply rejecting the old order and completely uprooting religious practices, megachurches like The Basement transform somewhat staid spiritual traditions into more palatable religious expressions for their mostly middle-class, suburban congregants.
In recycling and revitalizing past rituals, The Basement is following a model created in 1975 by Pastor Bill Hybels
at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago). The modern megachurch was born in Hybels’s congregation with his “seeker-sensitive” services. The strategy behind these services involves a secularization of religious ritual and the creation of a consumer-oriented service directed towards those evangelicals call
the “unchurched.” To get more people through the church doors, Hybels believed that religious leaders needed to create a cheerful environment, deliver a culturally relevant and non-judgmental sermon, and bring in bands and artists with a modern vibe. At first, Willow Creek held its “contemporary” services in a repurposed movie theater, but the formula worked so well that it had to move into a build
ing that would accommodate its growing numbers. The “seeker-sensitive” model became so popular that Hybels held seminars to teach other pastors how to implement it and attract scores of new converts. New “Creeker” churches replaced traditional hymns with praise songs played on electric guitars and ripped up their pews to install stadium seating. The movement valued relevancy over theology and “bigness” over the individual, creating the modern megachurch: a comfortable, entertaining, and largely effortless way to experience Christian fellowship.
Since proselytizing for these religious reforms, Hybels has actually reconsidered his original beliefs regarding the “seeker-sensitive” system, reaching the conclusion in a 2007 study that contemporary Christians needed not merely excitement but long-term spiritual development. Matt Pitt, however, has taken the “seeker-sensitive” model to the extreme with the establishment of Whosoever Ministries, a religious organization that aims to bring in unchurched young adults by “competing with clubs and bars for souls.” The twenty-something pastor explains, “the only reason that this MTV generation continues to wander aimlessly toward the darkness that the club lights have to offer is because they are bored out of their minds.”
As it draws from national megachurch trends, The Basement also responds to the cultural context of the state in which it thrives. Alabama has a convoluted and constantly evolving evangelical heritage. Before the Civil War, many slaves and slave owners converted to evangelical Protestantism but interpreted their new faith in widely different ways—either as a symbol of freedom or a mechanism of control. In the twentieth century, significant civil rights ministers—Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and Ralph Abernathy—hailed from Alabama and applied biblical teachings to break the bonds of segregation and white supremacy. Now, fifty years later, Pitt runs a diverse congregation and the leadership of the church reflects the attempt to construct a “post racial” environment. Pyrotechnics and rap music connect e Basement to the national megachurch aesthetic, but its blended demographic is making a very real regional impact. Ultimately, by creating a new style of evangelicalism and worship for a changing world, Matt Pitt and The Basement are continuing the tradition of two centuries.
This feature was previously published in Issue 100, Spring 2011.
Since proselytizing for these religious reforms, Hybels has actually reconsidered his original beliefs regarding the “seeker-sensitive” system, reaching the conclusion in a 2007 study that contemporary Christians needed not merely excitement but long-term spiritual development. Matt Pitt, however, has taken the “seeker-sensitive” model to the extreme with the establishment of Whosoever Ministries, a religious organization that aims to bring in unchurched young adults by “competing with clubs and bars for souls.” The twenty-something pastor explains, “the only reason that this MTV generation continues to wander aimlessly toward the darkness that the club lights have to offer is because they are bored out of their minds.”
As it draws from national megachurch trends, The Basement also responds to the cultural context of the state in which it thrives. Alabama has a convoluted and constantly evolving evangelical heritage. Before the Civil War, many slaves and slave owners converted to evangelical Protestantism but interpreted their new faith in widely different ways—either as a symbol of freedom or a mechanism of control. In the twentieth century, significant civil rights ministers—Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Shuttlesworth, Joseph Lowery, and Ralph Abernathy—hailed from Alabama and applied biblical teachings to break the bonds of segregation and white supremacy. Now, fifty years later, Pitt runs a diverse congregation and the leadership of the church reflects the attempt to construct a “post racial” environment. Pyrotechnics and rap music connect e Basement to the national megachurch aesthetic, but its blended demographic is making a very real regional impact. Ultimately, by creating a new style of evangelicalism and worship for a changing world, Matt Pitt and The Basement are continuing the tradition of two centuries.
This feature was previously published in Issue 100, Spring 2011.
Author
Charity R. Carney received a PhD from the University of Alabama, is the author of the forthcoming book Ministers and Masters: Methodism, Manhood, and Honor in the Old South (LSU Press, 2011), and currently is developing
a second book on the modern megachurch. Joshua D. Roth- man, standing editor of the “Southern Religion” department of Alabama Heritage, is associate professor of history at the University of Alabama and director of the university’s Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South, which sponsors this department.
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