There used to be more cows than people in Visalia, but a new 3,000-seat megachurch has brought Vegas kitsch to the worshippers of California’s Central Valley
With declining congregations, shuttered chapels and an ever shrinking number of priests, it is easy to assume that church in the US is on the way out for good. As parishes struggle to attract younger generations, and almost a third of Americans now declare no religious affiliation, this one nation under God seems to be rapidly losing its faith.
But some regions are bucking the trend, particularly in the south and west. In California’s Central Valley, the agricultural heartland of dairy farms and orchards that sprawl across the state’s flat fertile plains, producing half the country’s fruit and veg, the Catholic population is booming, and busy building. Rising out of the rolling landscape of fruit and nut trees, which march in a mesmerising grid as far as the eye can see, stands a gargantuan new beacon that here, at least, God is back – with bigger ambitions than ever.
At a crossroads on the outskirts of Visalia, a small city 200 miles north of Los Angeles (where the local paper once remarked, “There’s nearly more cows than people”), Christian fervour is brewing. On one corner stands the 3,000-seat megachurch of Visalia First, a big shed wrapped with the full-height tinted windows of a car showroom. Across the six-lane intersection is the more modest octagonal pavilion of the United Methodist church, as well as a Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. And on the fourth corner of the holy junction, bringing a stately air to proceedings, now stands the biggest Catholic parish church in the whole of North America.
