Since Pastor Chris Hodges founded Church of the Highlands in 2001, meeting in a rented auditorium at Mountain Brook High School, it has spiraled outward in popularity from Birmingham’s suburbs to become Alabama’s largest church, with at least 22 branches spread out from Huntsville to Mobile, Tuscaloosa to Auburn.
Now embroiled in controversy, will 2020 go down as the year Hodges was “canceled” by social media?
From the beginning, Church of the Highlands has been controversial, with accusations by some more established churches that it was stealing sheep from their congregations with its rock concert-style services led by racially integrated professional-level praise bands. Theologians questioned its doctrine in Hodges’ lifestyle-oriented sermons, Bible-teaching tinged with Louisiana charisma and folksy humor.
Through it all, Church of the Highlands grew and grew, built a sprawling $16 million campus on Grants Mill Road in Irondale for its headquarters, rented school auditoriums on Sundays in various cities, grew more branches, built more campuses and streamed live video of Hodges preaching to locations throughout the state. By the start of 2020, more than 50,000 people were gathering weekly at all those branches to hear the message.
Other pastors openly envied the growth, unprecedented in scope, and came to study Highlands’ methods. Highlands College was launched to teach a new generation of millennial ministry.
Even with in-person Sunday worship services suspended since March 10 due to coronavirus, Church of the Highlands has continued to thrive. It had long placed a priority on live-streaming high-quality video production of its services, so it was a smooth transition to online-only services. Members of the church already contributed their tithes online, so income remained strong.
“This is a very shrewd organization, very up to date,” said historian Wayne Flynt, retired from Auburn University and a nationally renowned scholar on Southern religion. “Church of the Highlands membership is typically under 50, or people who wish they were or act like they are, more suburban, upwardly mobile, millennial-oriented, conservative theologically, conservative politically.”
Cracks in the armor
In the midst of heightened racial tension after the killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day at the hands of Minneapolis police, critics of Hodges found a vulnerability in his armor. He had been liking social media posts by Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, whose controversial pro-Donald Trump agenda includes arguing that “White Privilege is a myth.”
A Birmingham City Schools high school English teacher pointed out what she said were Hodges’ culturally insensitive social media “likes” and set off a firestorm. The backlash has forced Church of the Highlands’ “Dream Team” of hundreds of volunteers to stop mentoring youth and providing social outreach to Birmingham public housing communities. (The church was not paid for those services.)
The Birmingham Housing Authority voted June 8 to end its agreement with the church, and also ousted Christ Health Center, a separate entity that was founded by Church of the Highlands in 2009 to provide health services aimed at public housing residents, especially those in the Marks Village community of Gate City. Christ Health Center had recently followed up on its March effort to provide drive-through mass COVID-19 testing on the Highlands campus by offering free mobile coronavirus testing in public housing. That has now ended, though the clinic still offers free COVID-19 testing for those residents at its clinic in Woodlawn.
The Birmingham Board of Education also voted June 9 to cut ties with the church, which since 2014 had paid Birmingham City Schools $817,000 for the rental of facilities at Parker and Woodlawn high schools.
Hodges has repeatedly, emotionally apologized for liking Kirk’s social media posts and said they do not reflect his views.
“I can tell you those social media posts that I ‘liked’ do not reflect, in any way, my true feelings or beliefs,” Hodges said in a June 2 statement. “I now realize they were hurtful and divisive, and I sincerely apologize.”
Still, the criticism intensified. And friends of Hodges say it has hurt him deeply.
“Pastor Chris doesn’t have a racist bone in his body,” said Associate Pastor Layne Schranz, who moved to Birmingham to help found the church. “His record for 20 years proves that.”
Hodges has always made racial inclusion and serving the inner city a theme of the church. In addition to spending $2 million to launch Christ Health Center, which has provided free and discounted services to the poor of Woodlawn and surrounding areas for more than a decade, he led an effort to buy an abandoned fire station in Woodlawn and turn it into the first Dream Center. It has been a focus of the church’s volunteer outreach in the city. Teams of hundreds of “Dream Team” volunteers do regular projects that include cleaning up trash and helping residents repair run-down homes.
When Hodges announced he planned to start a church in west Birmingham in 2018, some established black pastors condemned the effort. The Rev. Michael R. Jordan, pastor of New Era Baptist Church on the west side of downtown, called Hodges a “slavemaster” and put up a sign that said, “Black Folks Need to Stay Out of White Churches.”
Church of the Highlands started renting Parker High School, paying Birmingham City Schools $3,000 rent to use the auditorium every Sunday morning, and hired a black campus pastor, former Auburn University football star Mayo Sowell.
Before the coronavirus shutdown, Church of the Highlands was drawing thousands of black worshippers every Sunday, with mixed crowds at most branches and mostly black congregations at Parker and Woodlawn high school auditoriums.
Now, questions over Hodges’ support of Trump and social media affinity for Kirk have aroused suspicion.
“Some people think it’s deep in his heart,” said the Rev. Gwen Webb, who took part in Birmingham civil rights marches in 1963 and is now associate pastor of Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in west Birmingham. “If they allowed them to continue to meet there (at Parker and Woodlawn), there was going to be a lot of hostility. We really don’t need any more negative pushback in the city. Negative things bring negative consequences.”
Some white and black members at Highlands have been openly rethinking their allegiance.
“Mr. Trump’s rhetoric in support of white supremacy, power and the dog whistle calls for dominance is destroying the fabric of inclusivity and equality for which you preach, teach, and strive to provide here in Alabama,” wrote Christine Clark, who had attended the Tuscaloosa branch of the church, in an open letter directed at Hodges.
Hodges’ defenders have included the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who spoke out on Twitter in support of Hodges, and former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is running for his old U.S. Senate seat.
“The actions taken by the Birmingham Housing Authority and the Birmingham Board of Education against the Church of the Highlands represent an attack on both religious liberty and freedom of speech,” Sessions said.
Flynt said no one should have been shocked to discover Hodges’ political leanings line up with Turning Point USA and Trump.
“I’m not staggered that he’s for Trump,” Flynt said. “If you take any megachurch in America that’s mostly white and evangelical, the pastor has about a 90% chance of being for Trump. I don’t understand the shock.”
Flynt said white evangelical support for Trump might have been undercut as the economy took a dive during the lockdown and protests over police violence turned into riots in many cities.
The moves by the Birmingham Housing Authority and the Birmingham Board of Education might harm Hodges’ reputation with some people, but are likely to have little impact on the continuing growth of the church in heavily Republican Alabama, Flynt said.
“The identification with Trump is a good thing within the church even if it’s bad outside the church,” Flynt said. “It won’t affect the Church of the Highlands in the least.”
