The God of All Megachurches

 Sitting high up in the gods of America’s biggest house of worship, the 16,000-seat Lakewood church in Houston, Texas, the sensory experience is all-encompassing: above my head, the ceiling is changing colour, morphing from an imperial purple into a trance-inducing green. All around, the air hangs faint with stage-smoke that catches light-beams, while down below on a faraway stage a band is thumping out Jesus soft-rock.

The soaring vocals surge through the arena’s sound system. They cannot be escaped. The venue, formerly home to the Houston Rockets basketball team, is so vast that if the lead singer wasn’t projected onto the three high-definition video screens that hang above the stage, she would be a mere speck in the distance. “And the Lord is good…foreeeever,” she sings, her voice now starting to soar, “And I’ll shouuuuut it out…from the mouuuuntain tops…”