Post by pim on Sept 10, 2020 8:04:09 GMT 10
Hillsong’s strange tides
Lech Blaine, The Monthly, May 2020 issue www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2020/may/1588255200/lech-blaine/hillsong-s-strange-tides
Brian Houston (left)
Brian Houston’s Pentecostal movement in an age of climate change and coronavirus
It is difficult to convey the apocalyptic optimism of a Hillsong church congregation about to witness Brian Houston preaching in the flesh. In the middle of November 2019, as Australia burns with biblical infernos, a couple of thousand Pentecostal men are assembling in the southern suburbs of Brisbane to reach for salvation from loneliness and sin. The only women within the precinct are directing traffic through a packed car park with blissful grins and hand gestures.
With kindred anticipation, we march towards a gargantuan franchise of Hillsong, formerly known as Garden City Christian Church. In 2009, 79.1 per cent of its registered worshippers voted for their church to be consumed by Brian and Bobbie Houston’s proliferating empire of attractive pastors, flash millennials and aspirational battlers. Hillsong has grown into a diverse entertainment conglomerate: a record label and event management company, a film studio and 24-hour pay-TV channel, a Christian university and a book publisher. In 2016, the Australian arm of the church generated its highest ever tax-free income of $130,978,056.
Apart from the soft-drink bottles substituted for schooners of beer, we could be at a Big Bash cricket match. A quarter of the multicultural party are metrosexuals with stylish sneakers. A quarter are buff jocks and tattooed skegs. Another quarter are down-to-earth old codgers who you might run into playing Keno at the RSL. That leaves about 25 per cent of attendees who look how you might imagine – conservatively dressed middle-aged men, like Lyle Shelton, who is poking around here tonight.
The former Pentecostal youth pastor and ex-boss of the Australian Christian Lobby isn’t a member of Hillsong, and doesn’t know the Houstons personally, but he has been chartering buses from country Queensland to the annual conference in Sydney for more than 20 years. “I remember listening to Brian decades ago,” Shelton says later via Skype. “One of his biggest beefs with church was that it was boring. And he was right.”
Thanks to the ambition-fuelled visions of Brian Houston, church is boring no more. DJs blast Drake and Kendrick Lamar from the balcony of the arena while a food truck serves “Meat Your Maker” burgers to ardent carnivores. Dapper barbers offer free haircuts. As pre-Brian entertainment, a BMX rider risks serious injury in “The Cage of Courage”, a see-through sphere of daredevilry.
“Who reckons we can put another rider in the cage?” asks the MC. The whistling and clapping witnesses agree this is a ripper of an idea. “What we are about to attempt is highly dangerous. Give it up for our boys, Jefferson and Charles…”
Brian Houston – Hillsong’s most alpha male – has described his annual men’s events as “a festival without the drugs”, but you could have fooled this secular spectator. The only people I’ve ever seen so happy to be alive were aided by MDMA. Yet Pentecostalism peddles industrial-strength bliss without the crushing comedowns.
Just before the start of the main event, one of the yahooing attendees suffers what appears to be life-threatening cardiac arrest. “He’s gonna die!” a bystander screams, pleading for the aid of a doctor. First responders perform CPR, and others clear a path for the imminent arrival of an ambulance.
With onlookers confronted by the blunt reminder of human mortality, I assume tonight’s show might be delayed, or even cancelled. Not a chance. “Come on, guys!” says an usher, segueing from emergency to enthusiasm without skipping a beat. “Time to find a seat.” The crowd streams into the arena towards dreams of self-actualisation. A middle-aged man might be on the cusp of literally meeting his maker, but Brian Houston is in Brisvegas for one night only. The show must go on.
Inside, “Throw Your Arms Around Me” provokes grown men to hug each other with unabashed love. It’s an inclusive affair – all are embraced with equal glee. Hillsong isn’t just faith, fun and money: the church provides a trading place of basic human affection to many who might otherwise suffer social isolation.
One person I spoke to jokes that evangelical churches are rife with “sheep stealing” – recruitment from rival denominations – but Shelton claims that the great genius of Hillsong is their ability to convert non-believers.
“I can validate anecdotally,” he tells me, “that their churches are populated by people who have just come from nowhere. Literally.”
Gen Xers fly like mosquitos towards the bright lights at the front of the yawning auditorium. Hunters & Collectors is replaced by dubstep. The strobe lights blink faster and brighter. Juveniles clap and chant “Olé, Olé, Olé” in the mosh pit. After a theatrical blackout, the main screen is filled with a bright white cross, and the stage is occupied by Christian rockers. The entire audience goes into a frenzy.
“There’s three things I know about when the lads get together,” the lead singer shouts. “First, we know how to have a good time. Second is we know how to eat. AMEN! But most of all, we know how to praise!”
The military-strength strobes flash from aqua to purple. A handsome ensemble rips through “See the Light” from Hillsong Worship’s 2019 album Awake, which debuted at number 3 on the Australian ARIA charts, and number 1 on the Christian music charts in the United States. The reception here in Brisbane’s Mount Gravatt is ecstatic.
“Their music has revolutionised Christian churches globally,” Shelton tells me.
The smash-hit songs Hillsong produces, and for which it receives royalties, are now sung by an estimated 50 million people a week across the world, way beyond its own cathedrals. Armed with proceeds from music and tithing, Brian Houston’s creation has grown rapidly overseas, amassing 150,000 weekly worshippers in 28 countries, including around a dozen churches in the US, the holy grail for charismatic preachers.
Tonight, the atmosphere goes up a notch during “Good Grace”, a smash hit written by Houston’s oldest son, Joel, a spiritual guru to singer Justin Bieber, and co-pastor of Hillsong’s New York City church. The video of Joel performing the song has 12 million views on YouTube.
Clean hands, pure hearts
Good grace, good God
His name is Jesus!
During that infectious chorus, Brian Houston appears onstage with the stealth of a hit man, and looms behind the grinning band members. The plain palette of a black polo shirt and tight jeans enhances the glamour of the boss’s bleached white teeth and ripped, tanned arms. In the crowd, fists are raised with testosteroned hallelujahs.
With slicked back grey hair and an emphysemic voice, the Godfather of Hillsong evokes Marlon Brando playing Don Corleone, a dark aura belying his constant optimism. And like a rapper, Houston changes the gist of a phrase by dropping or raising the volume. Strange cadences give a sharper blade to mundane refrains.
“WHO do you think you are?” he asks, delivering a gospel version of “The Real Slim Shady”. “Who do you think you ARE?”
It has been the most tumultuous year in Houston’s public life. The unexpected ascension of his personal protégé Scott Morrison to the prime ministership in late 2018 led to pressing questions about the powerful pastor, such as what he believes theologically, and whether or not he covered up the paedophilia of his father, Frank.
“The rest of Australia,” Houston says with croaky machismo, “if they do know who I am and who Hillsong is, I think they’re still trying to work it out. My critics – you can put your own expletive in there. We know who they think I am. But NONE OF THAT makes any difference to who I actually am.”
Brian Houston doesn’t just thrive on persecution. He monetises it via Hillsong’s convenient iPhone app. Notoriety, and the hatred of copious opponents, has reinforced his influence among believers, because there’s nothing more Christ-like than fighting an epic PR battle against condescending heathens.
“More and more the world is full of thought police,” says Houston in a tense present. “People telling me what I think, or what they think I should think. Or they try to TELL ME what they think I have to think.”
There is a ripple of agreement from Houston’s battlers, who take attacks on him personally. After all, if people patronise Houston, a millionaire with a beautiful wife and influential friends, what would they say about the average Pentecostal?
“So, whether it’s about climate change, or droughts, or fires. Or what climate change has to do with a fire. Or whether it’s to do with sexuality. Or whether it’s to do with gender … There’s thought police trying to tell me how I have to think. I’m going to keep living my life according to who God says I should be!”
The congregation gives a vigorous ovation. Here, true believers are saved from the secular censorships of modern life by the brave convictions of a charismatic reactionary.
“He made it pretty clear!” Houston shouts. “It’s in Genesis chapter 1, verse 27. It says God created man in his own image – male and female … Then he stopped. Seems simple to me. But look how uncomfortable you’re feeling. Cos you’re worried about the thought police, who tell me how I should think. Yep, that’s off my chest!”
The crowd howls with laughter. They’ve spent the past week seeing Scott Morrison get belittled for offering “thoughts and prayers” to bushfire victims, and now the prime minister’s mentor is sticking up for him, and sticking up for them.
A sermon from Brian Houston is a discursive journey with flows of proselytising and ebbs of frivolity. The man of God is unexpectedly funny. He takes the piss out of himself and his assistants. Unlike the millennial pastors, whose punchlines are a little too smooth, Houston thrives on presenting as a bit of a loose unit, the happy-go-lucky larrikin who makes risqué jokes in important business meetings.
After mangling a quote from a church song, he descends into a babble, jokingly exposing the disposability of the lyrics. “You know the one!” he shouts to howls of laughter. “DA-da-da-da! Da-da-da-DA!”
Houston is Goliath cosplaying as David. Despite vast wealth, he pitches himself as a harvester of tall poppies, the most ordinary bloke of all, a daggy dad and red-blooded husband who talks more about sport and motorbikes than the sinfulness of abortion.
“Parramatta’s my rugby league team,” he announces to genial cheers. “And they’re a very good team.”
Houston, a pastor’s son, talks of being “a terror” in childhood bible studies, and frequently refers to private emotional trials. These imperfections are integral to the empire’s success. He needs to be exceptional enough to inspire worship, but also down-to-earth enough that the audience believes we can be Brian Houston too.
The rhetoric starts soaring again. He casts himself in the revolutionary tradition of Moses. He keeps asking the audience who we are, attributing any addictions, mental illnesses and porn habits we might have to the absence of a stable self.
“I’ve been around a while,” Houston says. “And I see people their whole lives just locked up. Because they don’t know who they are.”
Near me, a mesmerised teenager is wearing a black Hillsong hoodie that says DO YOU HAVE YOUR ID? on the chest and IDENTITY on the sleeve.
“I wrote a book … talking about my father, and me, and my children,” Houston says. “It was released maybe a year before I found out who my father – sadly – was. He was a paedophile.”
You could hear a communion wafer break within the arena. It is an astonishing moment of self-disclosure: Brian Houston is the son of a child molester. To many people, especially the survivors abused by Frank Houston who don’t believe that his powerful son did enough to punish him, Brian will never be anything else.
“I was 45 years of age – 1999 – when I first ever got told anything about my father abusing kids … I often thought what would have happened if I found out when I was much younger. When I wasn’t so sure who I was. I’m not sure I would even be here today.”
Awkward audience members provide the absolution of applause. Houston smoothly segues back to music. He asks us if we want to sing “Who You Say I Am”, which has 100 million YouTube views. Hillsong is a rapture factory. All the general dreads and boredoms of modern existence – plus any specific awareness of the bushfires plaguing Australia, or the crimes committed by Frank Houston – are cancelled out by the loudness of the music and the manic energy of the crowd.
“Who the son sets free,” sings the band and audience, “…is free!” spits Houston, like Kanye West rapping with Coldplay.
In the breakdown, Houston remixes the stories of Moses, Paul and the Prodigal Son with his own interior monologue. The words-per-minute rate rises, at first imperceptibly, but soon he is chanting with breakneck pace. He invites to the front anyone who wants to lose control of their soul. Men rush forward to be touched by the unconditional love of a cocksure optimist.
“The Devil has tried all sorts of things to confuse who they are,” Houston shouts about the saved, “and confuse who they think they are.”
Who are we? We are no one except who Brian Houston tells us to be. His sureness provides a cure for identity crisis. He makes life less confusing, less terrifying, more blessed by a powerful pastor’s prophesies of good health and great wealth.
The band delivers a final, frenzied crescendo. The most average, masculine-looking battlers are speaking in tongues with naked vulnerability. Houston screams at the top of his long-suffering lungs, so indiscriminately that I can only make out “THANK YOU, JESUS” and “THE HOLY GHOST” through the machine-gun saturation of biblical gibberish, a stream that floods us with adrenaline and kinship.
“The bells and whistles alone,” says Shelton, “are not enough. You can get that at a U2 concert. Combine that with the work of God. That supernatural dimension that can’t be explained in human terms. That to me is the X factor. That’s the real secret of their success.”
Only later, away from the gravitational pull of Houston’s undeniable X factor, do I realise that he failed to offer a thought or prayer for the stricken audience member – who might have died – presumably because doing so would kill the vibe. Pentecostals have paradoxical impulses: eternal optimism, and a short-term yearning for the apocalypse.
What is Hillsong? It is a message and a medium. It is the immaculate union of Christianity and capitalism, blending the gospels of Jesus Christ and Milton Friedman, and delivering those mixed messages with single-minded conviction through rock music, social media, reality TV, plus old-fashioned charismatic worship.
Defining Brian Houston as a pastor is like calling Rupert Murdoch a newspaper publisher. Houston and Murdoch are two unprodigal sons from the lucky country who revolutionised their fathers’ vocations, fuelled by visions of a global empire that could shape the beliefs of those who consume their seductive products.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has watched the rise and rise of Pentecostalism since the early 1980s. He observed John Howard opening the mammoth Hillsong Convention Centre in 2002 and met with Brian Houston while prime minister. The devout Anglican has nothing but respect for the faith of “good-hearted, hardworking individuals and families” who belong to Hillsong.
“What I am deeply concerned about,” Rudd tells me, “is the level of active business, political and theological manipulation by many of those in power, who know precisely what they are doing.”
What are they doing? Rudd is unequivocal: Pentecostal churches, with Hillsong the most prominent, have made a strategic decision to assert influence within the federal Coalition, rather than crusade from the sidelines through minor parties like Family First, or pressure groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby.
Rudd claims the relationship is mutually beneficial. The far-right flanks of the Liberal and National parties have found a constituency of “God’s army” to stack branches for preselection battles versus moderates, and to staff election-day polling booths against Labor and the Greens, at a time when membership numbers of all political parties have hit unprecedented lows.
“What I find most puzzling,” says Rudd, “is the secrecy.”
Scott Morrison’s origin story with Hillsong is slightly imprecise, because he has never publicly explained exactly when he met Brian Houston. Morrison was raised Presbyterian but jumped flocks before entering politics. During the 2007 election, Lyle Shelton chaired a “meet your candidate” forum for the Australian Christian Lobby in the seat of Cook, where Morrison had just won preselection.
“He got up unashamedly,” Shelton says, “and said, ‘Yeah, I’m a member of Hillsong. Brian Houston’s my pastor’ … I understand he was at their campus at Waterloo in inner-city Sydney.”
In the early 1980s, Frank Houston had founded the Sydney Christian Life Centre in Waterloo. Brian founded the Hills Christian Life Centre in Baulkham Hills, amid Sydney’s north-western sprawl. He later became national president of the Assemblies of God, an association of Pentecostal churches that included his father’s. In 1999, the son was forced to sack the father after the revelations of paedophilia. Brian then merged their two churches, rebranding them together as Hillsong, but keeping both venues.
“Heaven opened over that campus,” Houston later said of Waterloo.
It was there he met and evidently enchanted an aspiring politician named Scott Morrison. Scott’s wife, Jenny, had endured 10 unsuccessful rounds of IVF, but twin miracles coincided with the Morrisons’ switch to Hillsong. First, in 2007, Jenny naturally conceived and gave birth at the age of 39. Then, thanks to divine intervention from the state executive of the Liberal Party, Morrison was installed as the candidate for the electorate of Cook, despite initially losing preselection by 82 votes to eight.
Unfortunately, there was no local Hillsong in the Morrisons’ new Sutherland Shire neighbourhood, so the family transferred to Shirelive, later renamed Horizon, a fellow member of Houston’s Assemblies of God. (Hillsong departed from the organisation – renamed Australian Christian Churches – in 2018.)
Houston’s relationship with the Morrisons left such a distinct impression that Scott acknowledged him as a personal mentor in his maiden speech to parliament, and ranked the influence of faith above that of the Liberal Party and John Howard. “Australia is not a secular country,” he said, shortly after name-dropping Houston. “It is a free country. This is a nation where you have the freedom to follow any belief system you choose. Secularism is just one. It has no greater claim than any other on our society.”
The new MP finished with a quote from the Book of Joel: “Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” Even this visionary couldn’t have seen himself rising to cabinet within five years, and seizing the Treasury benches two years after that, fuelled by a self-belief reminiscent of Brian Houston in full flight.
A senior colleague who watched Morrison’s unstoppable ascent from close quarters says the party room still has no better idea than most Australians about Morrison’s deepest theological beliefs, although there is an open vibe of “arrogance”.
“Morrison and his acolytes view themselves as Christian soldiers,” the colleague tells me. “God’s on their side. They are working not only to save the country from sin, but also from the stupid bastards they’ve got as colleagues.”
In 2018, the spoils of Malcolm Turnbull’s crucified leadership were fought over by Peter Dutton, Murdoch’s apparent preference for prime minister, and Morrison, Brian Houston’s highest profile disciple.
Morrison’s key number-crunchers were Stuart Robert and Alex Hawke, two men who enjoy relationships with Hillsong. Hawke is MP in the electorate of Mitchell, which boasts the church’s Baulkham Hills headquarters, and he has attended congregations.
“The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity,” Hawke told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, “and when they’re blended it’s a very powerful duo.”
Robert – the husband of a Pentecostal pastor – gave a masterclass called “Pillars of Influence” at Hillsong’s annual conference in 2015, regarding “how to reach and influence the world”. In 2019, Robert, the new minister for human services, led a pilgrimage to Israel called “Treasures of Grace”, during which he was pictured baptising those who paid $5600 to be there.
Before the leadership spill, Morrison and Robert shared a prayer in the former’s office. “We prayed that righteousness would exalt the nation,” Robert later told journalist Niki Savva.
Morrison, the self-proclaimed underdog, entered Coalition folklore in 2019 by winning a federal election deemed a done deal for Labor by the secular mainstream media. He didn’t see it that way. He prayed for a miracle and won majority government. Robert was rewarded with a cabinet ministry and Hawke with an outer ministry. The new PM punctuated his victory speech with an American flourish.
“God bless Australia!” he exclaimed, to cries of “Onya, ScoMo!”
A month after the election, Morrison and Robert attended the Hillsong Conference at Qudos Bank Arena in Western Sydney. As the nation suffered under continuing drought, Brian Houston reminded his Christian soldiers that God – not government – would ultimately decide to break or extend it. “I’m prophesising rain,” the DIY meteorologist said with his eyes closed. “I’m believing it’s beginning to rain. I’m believing, truly, we’re gonna smell the rain.”
Afterwards, Houston and Morrison, two men at the peak of their respective powers, appeared onstage in front of 21,000 adoring fans. “We love Jesus,” the PM said. “Does anyone else feel that way? I thought so. I’ll tell you why: he loved us. I remember coming here many years ago – we’ve been here many, many times.”
An even more tanned than usual Houston wore a blue suit with maroon pocket square. “You do believe in miracles?” he asked.
“Absolutely!” beamed Morrison.
“I was going to ask you about the freedom of religion,” said Houston. “Without you having to give policy … Do you believe it will be secured for churches to feel safe in terms of their beliefs?”
“Yeah, I do,” Morrison said. “I do. This is one of the things I feel passionately about since I first went into parliament 12 years ago … We’ll do what we must do from a legislative point and the law.”
At the conference, Morrison thanked Australia for their prayers and well-wishes, including an email from Margaret Court during the election, and he wished for a country that supported his freedom to believe.
Dr Mark Jennings is a lecturer in religious studies at Murdoch University, who himself grew up within a Pentecostal church. He converted to a more mainstream denomination as an adult, due to his pastor’s opposition to gay marriage.
“Pentecostalism is very pragmatic,” Jennings says. “ ‘ When people have let us take power, we’ll make some changes. But until then, we’ll present a bit of a blank face.’ ”
Lech Blaine, The Monthly, May 2020 issue www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2020/may/1588255200/lech-blaine/hillsong-s-strange-tides
Brian Houston (left)
Brian Houston’s Pentecostal movement in an age of climate change and coronavirus
It is difficult to convey the apocalyptic optimism of a Hillsong church congregation about to witness Brian Houston preaching in the flesh. In the middle of November 2019, as Australia burns with biblical infernos, a couple of thousand Pentecostal men are assembling in the southern suburbs of Brisbane to reach for salvation from loneliness and sin. The only women within the precinct are directing traffic through a packed car park with blissful grins and hand gestures.
With kindred anticipation, we march towards a gargantuan franchise of Hillsong, formerly known as Garden City Christian Church. In 2009, 79.1 per cent of its registered worshippers voted for their church to be consumed by Brian and Bobbie Houston’s proliferating empire of attractive pastors, flash millennials and aspirational battlers. Hillsong has grown into a diverse entertainment conglomerate: a record label and event management company, a film studio and 24-hour pay-TV channel, a Christian university and a book publisher. In 2016, the Australian arm of the church generated its highest ever tax-free income of $130,978,056.
Apart from the soft-drink bottles substituted for schooners of beer, we could be at a Big Bash cricket match. A quarter of the multicultural party are metrosexuals with stylish sneakers. A quarter are buff jocks and tattooed skegs. Another quarter are down-to-earth old codgers who you might run into playing Keno at the RSL. That leaves about 25 per cent of attendees who look how you might imagine – conservatively dressed middle-aged men, like Lyle Shelton, who is poking around here tonight.
The former Pentecostal youth pastor and ex-boss of the Australian Christian Lobby isn’t a member of Hillsong, and doesn’t know the Houstons personally, but he has been chartering buses from country Queensland to the annual conference in Sydney for more than 20 years. “I remember listening to Brian decades ago,” Shelton says later via Skype. “One of his biggest beefs with church was that it was boring. And he was right.”
Thanks to the ambition-fuelled visions of Brian Houston, church is boring no more. DJs blast Drake and Kendrick Lamar from the balcony of the arena while a food truck serves “Meat Your Maker” burgers to ardent carnivores. Dapper barbers offer free haircuts. As pre-Brian entertainment, a BMX rider risks serious injury in “The Cage of Courage”, a see-through sphere of daredevilry.
“Who reckons we can put another rider in the cage?” asks the MC. The whistling and clapping witnesses agree this is a ripper of an idea. “What we are about to attempt is highly dangerous. Give it up for our boys, Jefferson and Charles…”
Brian Houston – Hillsong’s most alpha male – has described his annual men’s events as “a festival without the drugs”, but you could have fooled this secular spectator. The only people I’ve ever seen so happy to be alive were aided by MDMA. Yet Pentecostalism peddles industrial-strength bliss without the crushing comedowns.
Just before the start of the main event, one of the yahooing attendees suffers what appears to be life-threatening cardiac arrest. “He’s gonna die!” a bystander screams, pleading for the aid of a doctor. First responders perform CPR, and others clear a path for the imminent arrival of an ambulance.
With onlookers confronted by the blunt reminder of human mortality, I assume tonight’s show might be delayed, or even cancelled. Not a chance. “Come on, guys!” says an usher, segueing from emergency to enthusiasm without skipping a beat. “Time to find a seat.” The crowd streams into the arena towards dreams of self-actualisation. A middle-aged man might be on the cusp of literally meeting his maker, but Brian Houston is in Brisvegas for one night only. The show must go on.
Inside, “Throw Your Arms Around Me” provokes grown men to hug each other with unabashed love. It’s an inclusive affair – all are embraced with equal glee. Hillsong isn’t just faith, fun and money: the church provides a trading place of basic human affection to many who might otherwise suffer social isolation.
One person I spoke to jokes that evangelical churches are rife with “sheep stealing” – recruitment from rival denominations – but Shelton claims that the great genius of Hillsong is their ability to convert non-believers.
“I can validate anecdotally,” he tells me, “that their churches are populated by people who have just come from nowhere. Literally.”
Gen Xers fly like mosquitos towards the bright lights at the front of the yawning auditorium. Hunters & Collectors is replaced by dubstep. The strobe lights blink faster and brighter. Juveniles clap and chant “Olé, Olé, Olé” in the mosh pit. After a theatrical blackout, the main screen is filled with a bright white cross, and the stage is occupied by Christian rockers. The entire audience goes into a frenzy.
“There’s three things I know about when the lads get together,” the lead singer shouts. “First, we know how to have a good time. Second is we know how to eat. AMEN! But most of all, we know how to praise!”
The military-strength strobes flash from aqua to purple. A handsome ensemble rips through “See the Light” from Hillsong Worship’s 2019 album Awake, which debuted at number 3 on the Australian ARIA charts, and number 1 on the Christian music charts in the United States. The reception here in Brisbane’s Mount Gravatt is ecstatic.
“Their music has revolutionised Christian churches globally,” Shelton tells me.
The smash-hit songs Hillsong produces, and for which it receives royalties, are now sung by an estimated 50 million people a week across the world, way beyond its own cathedrals. Armed with proceeds from music and tithing, Brian Houston’s creation has grown rapidly overseas, amassing 150,000 weekly worshippers in 28 countries, including around a dozen churches in the US, the holy grail for charismatic preachers.
Tonight, the atmosphere goes up a notch during “Good Grace”, a smash hit written by Houston’s oldest son, Joel, a spiritual guru to singer Justin Bieber, and co-pastor of Hillsong’s New York City church. The video of Joel performing the song has 12 million views on YouTube.
Clean hands, pure hearts
Good grace, good God
His name is Jesus!
During that infectious chorus, Brian Houston appears onstage with the stealth of a hit man, and looms behind the grinning band members. The plain palette of a black polo shirt and tight jeans enhances the glamour of the boss’s bleached white teeth and ripped, tanned arms. In the crowd, fists are raised with testosteroned hallelujahs.
With slicked back grey hair and an emphysemic voice, the Godfather of Hillsong evokes Marlon Brando playing Don Corleone, a dark aura belying his constant optimism. And like a rapper, Houston changes the gist of a phrase by dropping or raising the volume. Strange cadences give a sharper blade to mundane refrains.
“WHO do you think you are?” he asks, delivering a gospel version of “The Real Slim Shady”. “Who do you think you ARE?”
It has been the most tumultuous year in Houston’s public life. The unexpected ascension of his personal protégé Scott Morrison to the prime ministership in late 2018 led to pressing questions about the powerful pastor, such as what he believes theologically, and whether or not he covered up the paedophilia of his father, Frank.
“The rest of Australia,” Houston says with croaky machismo, “if they do know who I am and who Hillsong is, I think they’re still trying to work it out. My critics – you can put your own expletive in there. We know who they think I am. But NONE OF THAT makes any difference to who I actually am.”
Brian Houston doesn’t just thrive on persecution. He monetises it via Hillsong’s convenient iPhone app. Notoriety, and the hatred of copious opponents, has reinforced his influence among believers, because there’s nothing more Christ-like than fighting an epic PR battle against condescending heathens.
“More and more the world is full of thought police,” says Houston in a tense present. “People telling me what I think, or what they think I should think. Or they try to TELL ME what they think I have to think.”
There is a ripple of agreement from Houston’s battlers, who take attacks on him personally. After all, if people patronise Houston, a millionaire with a beautiful wife and influential friends, what would they say about the average Pentecostal?
“So, whether it’s about climate change, or droughts, or fires. Or what climate change has to do with a fire. Or whether it’s to do with sexuality. Or whether it’s to do with gender … There’s thought police trying to tell me how I have to think. I’m going to keep living my life according to who God says I should be!”
The congregation gives a vigorous ovation. Here, true believers are saved from the secular censorships of modern life by the brave convictions of a charismatic reactionary.
“He made it pretty clear!” Houston shouts. “It’s in Genesis chapter 1, verse 27. It says God created man in his own image – male and female … Then he stopped. Seems simple to me. But look how uncomfortable you’re feeling. Cos you’re worried about the thought police, who tell me how I should think. Yep, that’s off my chest!”
The crowd howls with laughter. They’ve spent the past week seeing Scott Morrison get belittled for offering “thoughts and prayers” to bushfire victims, and now the prime minister’s mentor is sticking up for him, and sticking up for them.
A sermon from Brian Houston is a discursive journey with flows of proselytising and ebbs of frivolity. The man of God is unexpectedly funny. He takes the piss out of himself and his assistants. Unlike the millennial pastors, whose punchlines are a little too smooth, Houston thrives on presenting as a bit of a loose unit, the happy-go-lucky larrikin who makes risqué jokes in important business meetings.
After mangling a quote from a church song, he descends into a babble, jokingly exposing the disposability of the lyrics. “You know the one!” he shouts to howls of laughter. “DA-da-da-da! Da-da-da-DA!”
Houston is Goliath cosplaying as David. Despite vast wealth, he pitches himself as a harvester of tall poppies, the most ordinary bloke of all, a daggy dad and red-blooded husband who talks more about sport and motorbikes than the sinfulness of abortion.
“Parramatta’s my rugby league team,” he announces to genial cheers. “And they’re a very good team.”
Houston, a pastor’s son, talks of being “a terror” in childhood bible studies, and frequently refers to private emotional trials. These imperfections are integral to the empire’s success. He needs to be exceptional enough to inspire worship, but also down-to-earth enough that the audience believes we can be Brian Houston too.
The rhetoric starts soaring again. He casts himself in the revolutionary tradition of Moses. He keeps asking the audience who we are, attributing any addictions, mental illnesses and porn habits we might have to the absence of a stable self.
“I’ve been around a while,” Houston says. “And I see people their whole lives just locked up. Because they don’t know who they are.”
Near me, a mesmerised teenager is wearing a black Hillsong hoodie that says DO YOU HAVE YOUR ID? on the chest and IDENTITY on the sleeve.
“I wrote a book … talking about my father, and me, and my children,” Houston says. “It was released maybe a year before I found out who my father – sadly – was. He was a paedophile.”
You could hear a communion wafer break within the arena. It is an astonishing moment of self-disclosure: Brian Houston is the son of a child molester. To many people, especially the survivors abused by Frank Houston who don’t believe that his powerful son did enough to punish him, Brian will never be anything else.
“I was 45 years of age – 1999 – when I first ever got told anything about my father abusing kids … I often thought what would have happened if I found out when I was much younger. When I wasn’t so sure who I was. I’m not sure I would even be here today.”
Awkward audience members provide the absolution of applause. Houston smoothly segues back to music. He asks us if we want to sing “Who You Say I Am”, which has 100 million YouTube views. Hillsong is a rapture factory. All the general dreads and boredoms of modern existence – plus any specific awareness of the bushfires plaguing Australia, or the crimes committed by Frank Houston – are cancelled out by the loudness of the music and the manic energy of the crowd.
“Who the son sets free,” sings the band and audience, “…is free!” spits Houston, like Kanye West rapping with Coldplay.
In the breakdown, Houston remixes the stories of Moses, Paul and the Prodigal Son with his own interior monologue. The words-per-minute rate rises, at first imperceptibly, but soon he is chanting with breakneck pace. He invites to the front anyone who wants to lose control of their soul. Men rush forward to be touched by the unconditional love of a cocksure optimist.
“The Devil has tried all sorts of things to confuse who they are,” Houston shouts about the saved, “and confuse who they think they are.”
Who are we? We are no one except who Brian Houston tells us to be. His sureness provides a cure for identity crisis. He makes life less confusing, less terrifying, more blessed by a powerful pastor’s prophesies of good health and great wealth.
The band delivers a final, frenzied crescendo. The most average, masculine-looking battlers are speaking in tongues with naked vulnerability. Houston screams at the top of his long-suffering lungs, so indiscriminately that I can only make out “THANK YOU, JESUS” and “THE HOLY GHOST” through the machine-gun saturation of biblical gibberish, a stream that floods us with adrenaline and kinship.
“The bells and whistles alone,” says Shelton, “are not enough. You can get that at a U2 concert. Combine that with the work of God. That supernatural dimension that can’t be explained in human terms. That to me is the X factor. That’s the real secret of their success.”
Only later, away from the gravitational pull of Houston’s undeniable X factor, do I realise that he failed to offer a thought or prayer for the stricken audience member – who might have died – presumably because doing so would kill the vibe. Pentecostals have paradoxical impulses: eternal optimism, and a short-term yearning for the apocalypse.
What is Hillsong? It is a message and a medium. It is the immaculate union of Christianity and capitalism, blending the gospels of Jesus Christ and Milton Friedman, and delivering those mixed messages with single-minded conviction through rock music, social media, reality TV, plus old-fashioned charismatic worship.
Defining Brian Houston as a pastor is like calling Rupert Murdoch a newspaper publisher. Houston and Murdoch are two unprodigal sons from the lucky country who revolutionised their fathers’ vocations, fuelled by visions of a global empire that could shape the beliefs of those who consume their seductive products.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd has watched the rise and rise of Pentecostalism since the early 1980s. He observed John Howard opening the mammoth Hillsong Convention Centre in 2002 and met with Brian Houston while prime minister. The devout Anglican has nothing but respect for the faith of “good-hearted, hardworking individuals and families” who belong to Hillsong.
“What I am deeply concerned about,” Rudd tells me, “is the level of active business, political and theological manipulation by many of those in power, who know precisely what they are doing.”
What are they doing? Rudd is unequivocal: Pentecostal churches, with Hillsong the most prominent, have made a strategic decision to assert influence within the federal Coalition, rather than crusade from the sidelines through minor parties like Family First, or pressure groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby.
Rudd claims the relationship is mutually beneficial. The far-right flanks of the Liberal and National parties have found a constituency of “God’s army” to stack branches for preselection battles versus moderates, and to staff election-day polling booths against Labor and the Greens, at a time when membership numbers of all political parties have hit unprecedented lows.
“What I find most puzzling,” says Rudd, “is the secrecy.”
Scott Morrison’s origin story with Hillsong is slightly imprecise, because he has never publicly explained exactly when he met Brian Houston. Morrison was raised Presbyterian but jumped flocks before entering politics. During the 2007 election, Lyle Shelton chaired a “meet your candidate” forum for the Australian Christian Lobby in the seat of Cook, where Morrison had just won preselection.
“He got up unashamedly,” Shelton says, “and said, ‘Yeah, I’m a member of Hillsong. Brian Houston’s my pastor’ … I understand he was at their campus at Waterloo in inner-city Sydney.”
In the early 1980s, Frank Houston had founded the Sydney Christian Life Centre in Waterloo. Brian founded the Hills Christian Life Centre in Baulkham Hills, amid Sydney’s north-western sprawl. He later became national president of the Assemblies of God, an association of Pentecostal churches that included his father’s. In 1999, the son was forced to sack the father after the revelations of paedophilia. Brian then merged their two churches, rebranding them together as Hillsong, but keeping both venues.
“Heaven opened over that campus,” Houston later said of Waterloo.
It was there he met and evidently enchanted an aspiring politician named Scott Morrison. Scott’s wife, Jenny, had endured 10 unsuccessful rounds of IVF, but twin miracles coincided with the Morrisons’ switch to Hillsong. First, in 2007, Jenny naturally conceived and gave birth at the age of 39. Then, thanks to divine intervention from the state executive of the Liberal Party, Morrison was installed as the candidate for the electorate of Cook, despite initially losing preselection by 82 votes to eight.
Unfortunately, there was no local Hillsong in the Morrisons’ new Sutherland Shire neighbourhood, so the family transferred to Shirelive, later renamed Horizon, a fellow member of Houston’s Assemblies of God. (Hillsong departed from the organisation – renamed Australian Christian Churches – in 2018.)
Houston’s relationship with the Morrisons left such a distinct impression that Scott acknowledged him as a personal mentor in his maiden speech to parliament, and ranked the influence of faith above that of the Liberal Party and John Howard. “Australia is not a secular country,” he said, shortly after name-dropping Houston. “It is a free country. This is a nation where you have the freedom to follow any belief system you choose. Secularism is just one. It has no greater claim than any other on our society.”
The new MP finished with a quote from the Book of Joel: “Your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” Even this visionary couldn’t have seen himself rising to cabinet within five years, and seizing the Treasury benches two years after that, fuelled by a self-belief reminiscent of Brian Houston in full flight.
A senior colleague who watched Morrison’s unstoppable ascent from close quarters says the party room still has no better idea than most Australians about Morrison’s deepest theological beliefs, although there is an open vibe of “arrogance”.
“Morrison and his acolytes view themselves as Christian soldiers,” the colleague tells me. “God’s on their side. They are working not only to save the country from sin, but also from the stupid bastards they’ve got as colleagues.”
In 2018, the spoils of Malcolm Turnbull’s crucified leadership were fought over by Peter Dutton, Murdoch’s apparent preference for prime minister, and Morrison, Brian Houston’s highest profile disciple.
Morrison’s key number-crunchers were Stuart Robert and Alex Hawke, two men who enjoy relationships with Hillsong. Hawke is MP in the electorate of Mitchell, which boasts the church’s Baulkham Hills headquarters, and he has attended congregations.
“The two greatest forces for good in human history are capitalism and Christianity,” Hawke told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, “and when they’re blended it’s a very powerful duo.”
Robert – the husband of a Pentecostal pastor – gave a masterclass called “Pillars of Influence” at Hillsong’s annual conference in 2015, regarding “how to reach and influence the world”. In 2019, Robert, the new minister for human services, led a pilgrimage to Israel called “Treasures of Grace”, during which he was pictured baptising those who paid $5600 to be there.
Before the leadership spill, Morrison and Robert shared a prayer in the former’s office. “We prayed that righteousness would exalt the nation,” Robert later told journalist Niki Savva.
Morrison, the self-proclaimed underdog, entered Coalition folklore in 2019 by winning a federal election deemed a done deal for Labor by the secular mainstream media. He didn’t see it that way. He prayed for a miracle and won majority government. Robert was rewarded with a cabinet ministry and Hawke with an outer ministry. The new PM punctuated his victory speech with an American flourish.
“God bless Australia!” he exclaimed, to cries of “Onya, ScoMo!”
A month after the election, Morrison and Robert attended the Hillsong Conference at Qudos Bank Arena in Western Sydney. As the nation suffered under continuing drought, Brian Houston reminded his Christian soldiers that God – not government – would ultimately decide to break or extend it. “I’m prophesising rain,” the DIY meteorologist said with his eyes closed. “I’m believing it’s beginning to rain. I’m believing, truly, we’re gonna smell the rain.”
Afterwards, Houston and Morrison, two men at the peak of their respective powers, appeared onstage in front of 21,000 adoring fans. “We love Jesus,” the PM said. “Does anyone else feel that way? I thought so. I’ll tell you why: he loved us. I remember coming here many years ago – we’ve been here many, many times.”
An even more tanned than usual Houston wore a blue suit with maroon pocket square. “You do believe in miracles?” he asked.
“Absolutely!” beamed Morrison.
“I was going to ask you about the freedom of religion,” said Houston. “Without you having to give policy … Do you believe it will be secured for churches to feel safe in terms of their beliefs?”
“Yeah, I do,” Morrison said. “I do. This is one of the things I feel passionately about since I first went into parliament 12 years ago … We’ll do what we must do from a legislative point and the law.”
At the conference, Morrison thanked Australia for their prayers and well-wishes, including an email from Margaret Court during the election, and he wished for a country that supported his freedom to believe.
Dr Mark Jennings is a lecturer in religious studies at Murdoch University, who himself grew up within a Pentecostal church. He converted to a more mainstream denomination as an adult, due to his pastor’s opposition to gay marriage.
“Pentecostalism is very pragmatic,” Jennings says. “ ‘ When people have let us take power, we’ll make some changes. But until then, we’ll present a bit of a blank face.’ ”
