Johnson, Jessica. "The Fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle: How Online
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Johnson, Jessica. "The Fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle: How Online Counter-Narratives Catalyzed Change." The Demise of Religion: How Religions End, Die, or Dissipate. By Michael Stausberg, Stuart A. Wright and Carole M. Cusack. London,: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 119–134. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 29 Sep. 2021. <http:// dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781350162945.ch-007>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 29 September 2021, 04:44 UTC. Copyright © Michael Stausberg, Stuart A. Wright, Carole M. Cusack, and contributors 2020. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 7 The Fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle: How Online Counter-Narratives Catalyzed Change Jessica Johnson This chapter examines the organizational crisis that led to the demise of Mars Hill Church, an evangelical megachurch in Seattle led by Pastor Mark Driscoll that grew to 13,000 attendees at fifteen locations scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond, before it collapsed in the midst of administrative and financial scandal at the end of 2014. Before Mars Hill’s dissolution, the controversies surrounding Driscoll and the church were rapidly mounting from 2013 to 2014 amid intense turnover in staff as pastors began steadily resigning, and attendance numbers dropped from roughly 13,000 to 7,000 in the summer of 2014. By August 2014, when a protest organized by former members was held outside Mars Hill’s main facility, evidence had surfaced online that supported several accusations against Driscoll, including: plagiarism; the surreptitious use of the marketing firm ResultSource to achieve bestselling author status on a variety of book lists; the misappropriation of “global fund” tithes for churches in Ethiopia and India; and formal charges of bullying and micromanagement lodged by twenty-one ex-pastors (Johnson 2018: 35). In addition, Driscoll’s use of social media was becoming increasingly offensive to an ever-larger audience, given his regularly caustic use of Twitter and Facebook (Johnson 2018: 35). In March 2014, Driscoll publicly apologized for his scandalous use of social media in a letter to his congregation that received national coverage. In this message, he said that he would refrain from posting on social media until at least the end of 2014 and give few, if any, media interviews (Johnson 2018: 36). 120 The Demise of Religion Weeks later, Mars Hill’s Executive Elders (Mark Driscoll, Sutton Turner, and Dave Bruskas) announced a new document retention policy that would destroy all staff emails more than three months old. The plan was dropped only after the group’s attorney, Brian Fahling, asked them to preserve electronically stored information that may contain evidence for legal action in which the church, Driscoll, and others in Mars Hill’s leadership would be named as defendants in RICO litigation (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), Fraud, Conspiracy, Libel, Slander, and Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress (Johnson 2018: 36). One example of such treatment against a staff member publicly surfaced in late May 2014, when Mars Hill elder Phil Smidt refused to sign a non-compete agreement, which by then had become a common requirement for all departing church employees who wished to receive severance benefits. This contract prevented anyone from serving in a church leadership position within 10 miles of a Mars Hill location. Given the expanse of the church’s facilities, this non-compete agreement made it difficult for ex-staff to find pastoral work in western Washington. Non-disclosure agreements were also commonly required, and the threat of legal action invoked distress that haunted leaders long after their employ was terminated (Johnson 2018: 36). As a result of this negative attention, Pastor Mark resigned from the eldership of Mars Hill Church on October 14, 2014, although he was not deemed disqualified or removed by the board of overseers evaluating his fitness to pastor. Given he left without any judgment of illegal or immoral activity, Driscoll soon established a website under his name through which to release sermons preached at Mars Hill. He also planted a new church within two years of turning in his resignation, The Trinity Church located in Scottsdale, Arizona, which opened its doors in August 2016. Meanwhile, in Driscoll’s absence Mars Hill quickly fell apart and officially dissolved as a corporate body on December 31, 2014 (Johnson 2018: 37). By the time of Driscoll’s resignation from leadership a few months before Mars Hill’s disbanding, he achieved national influence among young male pastors, particularly within Neo-Calvinist circles, and international attention within Christian and secular media for stirring controversy. This chapter asks, given there was no explicit crime or charge of sexual abuse against Driscoll, what were the social dynamics of dissolution? Why was Driscoll compelled to The Fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle 121 resign when other authoritarian or abusive religious leaders remained in their pulpits around the United States? This chapter argues that former members’ public testimonies online, as well as other creative uses of social media and archival practices, disrupted Driscoll’s charismatic authority and his capacity to control a carefully constructed narrative and strategically revise the history of the church. In turn, this examination considers how the production and circulation of counter- narratives on websites, blogs, and social media, such as Twitter, signaled and catalyzed Mars Hill Church’s dissolution and Mark Driscoll’s fall. This research is based on a decade of ethnographic fieldwork spent researching Mars Hill from 2006 to 2016, including conversations and interviews with pastors and members before and after the church’s disbanding. While some of the material included in this chapter has been analyzed in my book, Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire (Johnson 2018), I am approaching the following testimonies and blogs written by key actors, as well as the influence that social media had on the church’s demise and Driscoll’s retirement from leadership, with fresh eyes and new interview material. In this chapter, my critical lens is focused on how the very online technologies used to spread Mars Hill’s influence and accrue Driscoll international celebrity became instruments of empowerment, particularly as wielded by two men with distinct leadership positions and perspectives on harmful practices from within the church and by two women who testified to abuses in spiritual authority by turning Driscoll’s own words, teachings, and voice publicly against him. Two Former Pastors’ Public Testimonies: Mike Anderson and Jeff Bettger Among the many confessions and testimonies posted online prior to the demise of Mars Hill Church from 2013 to 2014 that detailed harmful practices perpetrated by administration and leaders on institutional and interpersonal levels, two that had a major impact on audiences within and outside of the church were written by former pastors with distinct roles that provided them with particular authority, insight, and trust—Mike Anderson and Jeff Bettger. 122 The Demise of Religion As the former director of the Resurgence, Mars Hill’s online networking site for pastors around the world and repository for pastoral teaching content, Mike Anderson was also a frequent traveling companion of Mark Driscoll’s, organizing and attending events. In 2013, in a public testimony posted to his blog titled, “Hello, My Name is Mike, I’m a Recovering True Believer,” Anderson describes his role working with and for Driscoll as such: I spent so much time with him because I was the guy who organized conferences, planned and promoted books, directed the online content, and later worked directly on all of Mark’s projects—I was at the center of all of this and I was proud of helping make it bigger. I used to joke that my title should be ‘Minister of Propaganda’. (Anderson 2013) Anderson recalled heady days of hanging out with ABC News folks, dinner with golfer Bubba Watson, and meeting with “about a thousand ‘Christian Celebrities.’ I thought we were the supreme blessing to the world” (Anderson 2013). Anderson also relayed a story about having dinner with John Piper and his team at Desiring God that included Timothy Keller, reflecting on how “for me, regularly getting to sit with men like this was the equivalent of a die-hard football fan sitting down with the Super Bowl Champion Seahawks—these were my heroes” (Anderson 2013). Throughout his testimony, Anderson bore witness to the power of celebrity to convict “true believers,” including young leaders such as himself, that the “movement” that Mars Hill and Mark Driscoll led was not only blessed by God but “literally the hand of God moving across the world to make it ‘better’” (Anderson 2013). Using details concerning his role as marketing director alongside confessional remarks that allude to his own culpability in administrative abuses of authority and power, Anderson presented a compelling testimony that speaks to harms perpetrated by the church that he and his family also fall subject to, using language to not only depict but also enact how this harm came into being and took a persuasive cast such that it became easily justifiable or brushed aside for the sake of the church’s multigenerational legacy and perpetual growth. Anderson began his blog post with a confessional passage that resounds with fascist and nationalist overtones: The Fall of Mars Hill Church in Seattle 123 I’ve seen many friends make bad choices in their 20s. For some, regular partying quickly turned into alcoholism; for others, prescription drugs led them into dark places. For me, it was religion. You see, I’m what they call a True Believer. I really like the idea of changing the world: sacrifice for the cause, single-minded drive for the ‘mission,’ a charismatic leader.