Corporate Worship: Spectacle, Antenarrative, and Fragmented Identity in Christian Megachurches

Critical organizational communication scholars have argued that the corporation has supplanted the church as a primary social institution, but the megachurch represents a unique incursion of corporate and capitalist logics into the spaces of divinity. This study interrogates this transformation using a deconstruction analysis of ethnography, documents, and member interviews from two megachurches. This study frames identification in the Christian megachurch as an antenarrative process of storytelling and spectacle. Results suggest that members narrated identification processes through the interplay of incorporation and salvation. This study also presents a narrative reframing of spectacle and examines spectacular identification as a site for suppressing organizational democracy.