History
The origins of the megachurch movement, with a large number of local congregants who return on a weekly basis can be traced to the 1950s. There were large churches earlier in history, but they were considerably rarer. Examples include Charles Spurgeon's Baptist Metropolitan Tabernacle in London which attracted 5,000 weekly for years in the late 19th century, and religious broadcaster Aimee Semple McPherson's Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, which was similarly large. The advent of television in the 1950s, and the Internet in the 1990s and 2000s have been seen as a motivator for megachurches as megachurch services are often broadcast.
Read more about this topic: Megachurches
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