Cult of Personality

Yesterday I saw the "news" that 44 people had been laid off from New Life Church in Colorado in the wake of the Ted Haggard scandal. I didn't put much thought into it until I read the comment thread on Fark and this, from "la_cyberchicana":

Guess the congregants were there for the pastor, the after-school activities, and the club-like atmosphere. They certainly weren't there for Christ.

A few years ago, I was a member of a Catholic parish whose associate pastor (read: junior priest) was discovered to be one of Cardinal Law's problem boys. He wasn't around long enough to mess with any of our kiddies (or so we devoutly hoped), and after he was outed in the Boston Globe and our own local paper, he left the parish for parts unknown. It was subsequently learned that the senior pastor (read: head priest) knew of his background and kept it quiet, even going so far as to put him in charge of the altar servers. That was a black day for us all.
( Cut for Brevity )

The only thing I can really add to the discussion is that church does have to have some kind of social component, at least in my experience. But that is to enrich the experience, not provide the reason for going in the first place. Without sounding needlessly trite, everyone needs some kind of social connection, hermits aside, and getting together with people of one's faith seems to be a component to it. Take out the social component entirely and you have dreary ritual of the sort lampooned in Dogma.