Image via Hillsong.com. Remixed by Danny Peterson.
Hillsong is the Australia-based evangelical church with a global reach that has become very popular celebrities in the US, but has recently experienced a marked decline in influence after some of its leaders have been embroiled in scandals. What exactly were these scandals and who are the celebrities associated with the church?
Problems with church leadership
Last week, Hillsong founder Brian Houston resigned from the church following an internal investigation that found he had violated the organization’s code of conduct on at least two occasions for inappropriate behavior toward two women, according to the New York Times.
Amid this and other controversies, there has been a surprisingly rapid decline in church membership, with as many as nine of the 16 American church campuses associated with the organization splitting with Hillsong in the past two weeks, one said Follow-up report from the NYT.
This comes after scandals have been brewing in the church for the past two years, beginning with the 2020 firing of another Hillsong US East Coast campus director, Carl Lentz,” according to People. According to a documentary miniseries on Discovery Plus, Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed, a woman claimed to have had an affair with Lentz for months.
The documentary miniseries painted the church as image-obsessed, controlling, and fixated on expanding its reach at all costs, and was drawn from interviews with former members, former employees, and critics. Phil Dooley, the church’s interim global leader, called the portrait of Hillsong in the documentary miniseries “almost unrecognizable” for members, the New York Times quoted as saying.
In January, Australia-based founder Brian Houston resigned from his post following a criminal complaint for covering up past sexual abuse by his late father Frank Houston, also a pastor.
Australian police’s claim, according to an indictment filed in August 2021, was that the younger Houston “was aware of information [about his father] in connection with the sexual abuse of a young man in the 1970s and failed to bring this information to the attention of the police” – a claim he denies.
Frank Houston founded the Sydney Christian Life Center in 1977, which later merged with the Hills Christian Life Center, founded by Brian Houston. The newly restructured megachurch was named Hillsong.
Regarding the allegations of misconduct that prompted his resignation, the younger – and married – Houston allegedly sent “inappropriate texts” to an employee, according to a statement from Hillsong’s board of directors. He also allegedly spent time alone — around 40 minutes — in a Sydney hotel room with another woman, who then filed a formal complaint, church officials said. Both unnamed women were issued compensation in an undisclosed amount by Houston.
Although Hillsong began as an offshoot of the Pentecostal Church in Australia, in 2018 Hillsong became its own denomination with a strong emphasis on music, with one of their worship bands even winning a Grammy Award.
Celebrities associated with the Church
Vox described Lentz, the now-fired East Coast leader of Hillsong, as a “close friend” of pop megastar Justin Bieber. Lentz has also been described by The New York Times as Bieber’s mentor and a celebrity in his own right. Although Lentz christened Bieber a few years ago, the couple had a falling out in 2018, according to People.
Chris Pratt and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger are linked to Los Angeles-based Zoe Church, who has been described by People as part of the Hillsong “family” and as “Hillsong-neighboring” by Newsweek and Refinery29. Church founder Chad Veach also told the NYT in 2018 that he modeled the congregation after Hillsong.
A 2015 blog post written by Veach on the Hillsong website seems to confirm that he considered Zoe Church part of the Hillsong “family,” at least back then.
“In many ways it is [sic] a ‘family reunion’ that some of our closest friends around the world attend each year,” Veach wrote in the post, referring to this year’s Hillsong conference in Sydney.
However, official affiliation between the two churches could not be found on either Hillsong’s website or Zoe Church’s website at press time. It’s unclear if the ties between the two churches were severed after the scandals, or if Zoe Church was always considered an affiliate with only loose ties rather than a Hillsong subsidiary.
Separately, Pratt has come under fire from actor Elliot Page and others for associating with the supposedly anti-LGBTQ community, though Pratt has denied that claim. Zoe Church hasn’t officially come out as a direct opponent of the LGBTQ community, but her pastor once produced a film that equated homosexuality with “sexual brokenness,” according to The Daily Beast. However, Hillsong has a history of facilitating conversion therapy for gay people and denying leadership roles to LGBTQ individuals.
Hillsong founder Houston noted in a 2015 blog post that while the church “welcomes ALL people,” it “does not embrace a gay lifestyle.” The post, titled Do I Love Gay People?, was written in 2015 following a controversy in which Josh Canfield, a gay man who served as Hillsong’s New York choirmaster, was allegedly fired because of his sexuality.
The revelation about Canfield’s sexuality came while he was a contestant on the reality show Survivor, where he stated he was a gay Christian attending Hillsong. Shortly thereafter, he was fired from his position, according to an article in Church Clarity, a website dedicated to exposing ambiguous church policies.
Below is a list of other celebrities who have had ties to Hillsong Church in one of its many branches, or who have been spotted attending a service in the past (via People). The list was made in 2020, before nine of the branches parted ways with the organization in the past two weeks.
- Justin Bieber
- Hailey Baldwin (Bieber’s wife)
- Kendall Jenner
- KylieJenner
- Kourtney Kardashian
- Selena Gomez
- Tyson Chandler, former NBA basketball player
- Kevin Durant, a current basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets in the NBA
- Kyrie Irving, a current basketball player for the Brooklyn Nets in the NBA
- Nick Jonas
- Hailee Steinfeld
- Good
Not only known for attracting celebrities, the myriad of scandals mentioned above, and its music, Hillsong Church was also known for appealing to young people in general through its Instagram-friendly aesthetic and even started a fashion trend with many of its members sporting fedoras.
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