The Enshittification of The American Church

I was watching a Theo Von podcast a few nights ago and his guest used a word I’d never heard before and I’m a wordsmith. The word was “enshittification.” I obviously got the “sh*t” part of the word, and the “fication” application as well as the negative context in which the word was utilized, so I just had to look it up to see if it was legit and boom … it is.

For the newbies, “Enshittification” is an intentionally crude term for the slow degradation of something that started out useful, valuable, powerful, and pretty dang good. Over time, the thing gets tinkered with, monetized, sanitized, commercialized, complicated, and “improved” until the original product is a big pile of caca toro. What once served people well eventually becomes a bloated, watered-down, shoddy shadow of what it used to be.

And then it hit me … that’s a pretty good description of what has happened to large swaths of American Christianity. Not only has the American Church become effeminized it has also enshittified. Check it out …

We inherited a faith that was forged in persecution, blood, sacrifice, courage, repentance, holiness, suffering, evangelism, and absolute allegiance to Jesus Christ.

Then America got hold of it and decided it needed a prissy makeover.

Apparently, Jesus needed better branding.

So we took a faith that told people to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow Christ, and began asking how we could make it more comfortable, convenient, entertaining, marketable, therapeutic, and completely non-offensive.

We swapped epic sanctuaries for auditoriums, shepherds for CEOs, congregations for audiences, sermons for “talks,” worship for productions, discipleship for programming, repentance for affirmation, and the fear of God for the fear that somebody might leave us a crappy Google review.

The apostles turned the Roman world upside down without fog machines, skinny jeans, big screens, marketing consultants, Instagram accounts, coffee bars, worship experiences, personal brands, or a pastor whose teeth could light up a medium-sized airport.

They had Scripture.

Prayer.

The Holy Spirit.

The Gospel.

And Cojones.

They also had an impressive willingness to get beaten, imprisoned, run out of town, or killed rather than zip it about Jesus.

Somewhere along the way, however, American Christianity began “improving” the formula.

We made Christianity easier to attend but harder to distinguish from the vapid culture.

We made churches bigger while sometimes making disciples shallower.

We accumulated Christian celebrities, yay … influencers, while producing Christians who barely know their Bibles.

We became experts at attracting crowds while occasionally forgetting that Jesus never commanded us to attract crowds.

He commanded us to make disciples.

The result is a peculiar American alien mutation of Christianity in which people can attend church for twenty years, hear a thousand sermons, sing five thousand worship songs, consume ten thousand hours of Christian content, and still be terrified of confrontation, ignorant of the Word, addicted to comfort, scared of suffering, unwilling to evangelize, and incapable of defending what they supposedly believe.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what I now, officially and affectionately call …

The Enshittification of American Christianity.

By the way, this didn’t happen overnight.

It happened one little compromise and bad idea at a time.

Here’s how America ruined Christianity.

The enshittification process looks something like this:

1. From disciples to customers. The church stops asking, “How do we make disciples?” and starts asking, “How do we keep people coming back?” Members become consumers. Pastors become service providers. Worship becomes the product.
2. From truth to branding. Churches once worried about doctrine. Now some worry more about logos, lighting, social-media engagement, sermon graphics, and whether the lobby has sufficiently artisanal coffee.
3. From worship to production. The congregation increasingly watches professionals perform Christianity. Lights down. Stage lights up. Band starts. Screens roll. The danger is that worship becomes something you attend rather than something you offer.
4. From preaching to content. “Preach the word” (2 Timothy 4:2) gets replaced by “produce something engaging.” Exposition gets jettisoned and replaced with a yummy TED Talk with three Bible verses sprinkled over it like parsley.
5. From repentance to affirmation. Jesus began His ministry preaching, “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). A degraded and lame Christianity subtly reversed that order: God exists primarily to affirm me, improve me, validate me, and help me accomplish my dreams.
6. From discipleship to therapy. Scripture certainly addresses sorrow, fear, guilt, suffering, and wounded people. But Christianity gets distorted when its central question becomes “How can God make me feel better?” rather than “How shall I glorify God?”
7. From the fear of God to the fear of Yelp reviews. The New Testament repeatedly warns church leaders about pleasing men. Yet churches can become terrified that straightforward preaching might offend attendees, donors, activists, denominations, or the internet mob.
8. From shepherds to CEOs. Biblical pastors are shepherds, teachers, overseers, and servants. The corrupted model produces religious entrepreneurs obsessed with platforms, campuses, followers, book deals, influence, and organizational growth.
9. From holiness to vibes. Instead of asking whether something is true, biblical, holy, or righteous, the question becomes whether it feels sweet, loving, welcoming, emotive, positive, or “life-giving.”
10. From costly Christianity to convenient Christianity. Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). American consumer Christianity says, “We have three convenient service times and parking attendants.”
11. From church discipline to reputation management. The New Testament assumes churches will confront serious, unrepentant sin (Matthew 18:15–17; 1 Corinthians 5). Institutions can instead protect brands, influential leaders, attendance figures, or revenue.
12. From biblical literacy to inspirational snippets. Christians can consume mountains of Christian content while knowing remarkably little Scripture. Instead your typical dull believer relies on podcasts, reels, sappy devotionals, clips, conferences, personalities, and … maybe … maybe … maybe … five minutes of actually reading the Bible per week.
13. From fellowship to spectatorship. Acts 2:42 describes Christians devoted to teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayer. The degraded version is arriving late, watching a show, slipping out early, and knowing virtually nobody.
14. From spiritual warfare to self-improvement. The New Testament depicts Christians battling sin, temptation, false teaching, the flesh, the world, and the devil. Sanitized Christianity can sound more like a motivational seminar: discover your potential, find your purpose, become your best self.
15. From “Here am I, send me” to “What’s in it for me?” Yo, morons … the biblical trajectory is sacrifice, service, generosity, evangelism, endurance, and mission. Consumer Christianity asks whether the music was good, whether the sermon was too long, and whether somebody remembered the gluten-free communion crackers.

That my friends is the Enshittification of the American Church in a nutshell:

Christianity becomes progressively easier to consume while becoming progressively harder to distinguish from the surrounding demonic culture.

And perhaps the funniest, and most damning part is, that the cure isn’t particularly innovative. We just have to simply go back to the Bible and do the following …

Preach the Word.

Pray.

Repent.

Take Communion.

Make disciples.

Practice church discipline.

Give generously.

Serve one another.

Care for the poor.

Evangelize.

Suffer faithfully.

Love God.

Love your neighbor.

In other words, after spending billions of dollars reinventing Christianity for the carnal palette of spiritual goats, the revolutionary solution … the shocking idea might be …

Just stick with Biblical Christianity.