Hi Kevin,
this I feel is getting too off-topic, so I keep it short. It seems, Chapman does not know what he is talking about. Regarding Mahasi Sayadaw and jhana I put a few quotes together here and here.
If you are a lay person with no previous meditation practice and limited time, yes, you usually skip samatha. But that’s only half the story.
His meditation teacher the Mula Mingun Sayadaw first established a meditation center in 1918. And there is a distinction to be made between meditation monks, who only spend time meditating, and “normal” students in the Mahasi sasana. Besides their meditation center they have a school that teaches textual study of “Mahasi thought”, suttas, commentaries and so on. Mahasi himself was not only the chief questioner at the sixth council, but also one of the main editors of the tipitaka and commentaries.
And I would argue, that a single-minded focus on stream-entry is the opposite of secularized, isn’t it?