The Ryno Pen

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” Matthew 6:28 -

Expect a considerable amount of spin from Hillsong’s media arm, now that Tanya Levin’s book is out.

The history related by Tanya Levin in the prefatory pages could be interpreted as damning: so could the biblical verses quoted. As a guide to the discerning reader, Levin explains the importance of context. Context (and taking verses or statements out-of-context) is a fundamental factor in the differences between the views and practices of the various limbs and extremities of the faiths that call themselves Christian.

In biblical texts, there is a personal narrative, underlain by history and a connection with the life and experience of a faith. Similarly, PIGH interweaves the ongoing rises and falls of Levin’s faith and emotional stability, a small church’s metamorphosis into a large tax-free corporation, and the rise of something beyond a “church militant” – “The Church As Powerful, Scary Thing”?

Tanya Levin’s experiences are in a way similar to the biblical book of Job: the main character passes through various degrees of misery, as a related (but relatively uncaring) struggle among higher powers takes place above. The story ends with Job getting on with life, but all the destruction and pain has still happened. The character Job starts out in relative peace, comfort and routine, as one who “was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.”: Levin’s story began in the relative conservative calm of South Africa. Her parents emigrated to Australia prior to the political upheavals that followed the Soweto riots, and became involved in a Pentecostal church while she was quite young.

The family had been members of the movement for some years before joining the fledgling (Baulkham) Hills Christian Life Centre church in 1985. The traditional church trappings were dispensed with as the informal church set up in a warehouse without stained glass, pews or altar furniture. Levin mentions at this point that Holy Communion is no longer taken at Hillsong. Perhaps this has also been deemed unproductive? Along the way, “this do in remembrance of me” (Luke 22.19) has been supplanted by a more lucrative message:

As she grew in years Levin grew somewhat dismissive of the characteristic charismatic signs and wonders, so that at sixteen she had these views:

Prophecies:

“Nothing I couldn’t have read in Athena Starwoman”.

Tongues:

Before I knew it, I thought,“He’s talking rubbish” (I had noticed this before. Sometimes tongues consists of ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba.”)

If anything, the Hillsong movement is a cult of personality. It is evident that the leading man of Hillsong still exerts some charm over Levin:

“Even today, when I hear Brian Houston’s voice, I feel better.”

This power is also seen at work in damage-control mode when the matter of Brian’s father is dealt with:

Brian Houston stood on stage that day in November 2002 to describe what he later told the press was the hardest time of his life. He also told the media that he had been completely open and honest with his church and had used words like `predator’ and `sex offender’. That simply didn’t happen, at least not on that day…

Brian began swiftly. `About two years ago, George Aghajanian received a phone call from someone making some allegations about my father. I did the toughest thing of my life and went around to my father and confronted him. He broke down and confessed that the allegations were true.

“I immediately stepped aside and let the investigators from the National Executive do their job. My father was found guilty of ’serious moral failure’ and his credentials were taken away from him.” (At this point I was waiting for the punchline, and had a near-irresistible urge to yell out like the boys used to do in the old days, `What did he DO, Brian?’) “This has devastated my family. We haven’t told our daughter yet, but the boys know and they’re doing okay. My son came into my room the other night, and he said, ‘Dad, I still love Jesus.’

“You know, my dad loved God. And while he was deeply repentant for the mistakes he had made, it didn’t change his love for God.”

Once again, Brian took Bobbie’s hand and asked the church to pray for them and for their family, given the ordeal they had just been through.

That was it. The entire congregation responded by giving Brian and Bobbie Houston a standing ovation.

Rather than a huge statement from the pulpit, this was a tiny one. There was no demand for righteousness, no zero tolerance stance on abuse of children. There was no plea for forgiveness from those wronged, no promise that the giant congregation would join together to prevent this from ever happening again. That policies would be put in place so that everyone in leadership understood the signs and their responsibilities.

There wasn’t even a naming of the crime, simply an appeal for prayer for the Houstons.

Other major personalities of the emergent Hillsong are discussed, among them Geoff Bullock and Pat Mesiti.

Geoff is the person primarily responsible for the interchurch music network, “Hillsong”, whose name eventually became the title of the megachurch Brian Houston created out of the small enterprise in Baulkham Hills:

At the time, I didn’t understand why we needed a music pastor. Surely we could just sing some songs and get on with learning about Jesus. Why we needed a full-time person to be in charge of songs and to write more of them was beyond me.

At Hills we had Geoff Bullock. Married to Janine since forever with five children, two more than Brian, Geoff was our Piano Man. Short and stocky, with blue eyes that pierced you like laser beams, Geoff wrote most of the songs and music that we sang, and ran the choir. I liked the clapping songs. They were fun. He wrote good songs, good music, played well and enjoyed his part of church. Still, to me he was just the organ lady.

____

Eventually doing music, dance, drama and creative arts for Jesus was so popular that people wanted to spend a week at it. By 1987, Geoff created a music conference he called Hillsong which, just quietly, made me hope they’d all gather together and get it out of their arty systems, so that we could get on with the business of changing the world. Much to my annoyance, the annual Hillsong conference did very well, which gained them more attention. By 1999, the church was known worldwide by the music conference so it was decided to call the city and Hills churches Hillsong.

Stubbornly, I ignored the growing number of attendees at the conferences. I hoped there were just more arty people than we knew what to do with, and that they would meet and dance their Christian dances in private. I also paid no attention to the growing number of music pastors who joined Geoff in his work. Neither, it seems, did Geoff, until his monster grew a life of its own.

You will not find Geoff at Hillsong these days: he’s more likely to be seeing a therapist for the ongoing PTSD which is a legacy of his break with the organisation. More here.

Pat Mesiti, by contrast, seems to have continued on in much the same way as he began, despite setbacks and a time out of favour:

Everybody loved Pat, and why wouldn’t they? He was a solid family man and he was scoring big numbers in heaven. His youth rallies had a deep impact on their audiences. Young people poured down to the altar call to get saved. Pat could tally up more salvations at one concert than Hills could in a month of Sundays. That was Pat, able to get people to believe anything, as if it were the first time you had heard the story. Sometimes it was good to hear the retelling just to enjoy the character and the jokes all over again. We knew in Pat we had the genuine article.

Mesiti is understood to have offered to take legal action if his name was mentioned in Levin’s book.

There is damage along the way, and it’s usually the innocent/gullible/fragile: the young female friend who has been initiated into (nonmarital) sex by an elder of the church.

…they would have sex on the weekend. Directly afterwards, he would insist that they both pray on their knees for forgiveness, which they would do. By the end of Sunday night’s church service, he would be overwhelmed by his guilt and would break up with her. Until Friday.

This girl took the morning-after pill so many Mondays in a row that it was getting dangerous. Obtaining contraception implies intent. It isn’t an option for Christian girls, reality or not. She was not the only person who had given this elder everything. And as time went on, she was not to be the last.

Given the many CDs and rock or pop genre products available from Hillsong, this diary entry struck your reviewer as a prime example of irony.

Sun, 4 January 1987

This is the day I was freed from the Spirit of rock’n'roll. I started up a conversation with John O’D who DJs at 2-Day FM and he told me he despises the music. He told me the worst person Satan has anointed is Bruce Springsteen. I told him he was telling the wrong person. He disagreed. We talked. Rock’n'roll is all about fornication, especially `Dancing in the Dark’. It hit so hard. He told me to pray when I got home. Then he offered to pray for me. He released me from the spirit of RNR and seduction and I cried. He told me God loves me and has so much for me. I came home and for 1 1/2 hours I sat in the dark crying, taking down posters, breaking records, destroying tapes. I am giving rock music up. I can’t believe I’m saying this.

I will be free but I’m gonna miss my Bruce and I’m dying to hear Thunder Road.

My parents are very proud. I am very scared and Michael Murphy is one of the most beautiful people in the world. He has an incredible joy bursting out. My walls are so empty. I’m very confused. I must talk to John again.

This chapter could be read as diary entries marking an as-yet-undefined spiritual journey. Then again, it could also be interpreted as descending steps into breakdown. The context will tell.

“I don’t understand some of the things God does but I accept them.”

In the chapter “Reason To Believe” -

it’s good to know you’re clean in an unclean world…

the role of insularity is revealed. The culture of Pentecostalism-run-wild flourishes best in a vacuum or a large plot of all-the-same sayers-of-Hallelujah. The drama, warmth, delusions of God-enabled invincibility, and other emotional payoffs are great, and you can always pray for the nay-sayers.

Doubt is interpreted as a personal attack from Satan. This in turn leads to more fervent fasting and prayer. Any failure is attributed only to the human subject:

“… I had to do my part… If you don’t, God can’t do his.”

The chapter on the AOG flavour of demonology is interesting. [Your reviewer’s personal experience as an unwilling “exorcist” is vivid but could easily have been the result of hysterical 'deliveree' who would have agreed to any suggestion, however absurd.]

Levin probably puts it best:

I remain unexorcised. Or spirited. Depends what side you’re sitting on.

The author’s discovery of love (the eros type, not that of the Spirit) and the bonking that is a usual consequence thereof, led to a break with Hillsong that lasted for some time. With tertiary studies came housemates with ideas like feminism, most dangerous to fundy faith. Levin experienced exposure to thinking that is not back-and-white.

It could be said that one of the costs of being “one of the flock” is the loss of the facility to choose and direct one’s own life: this would be a valid explanation of Levin ’s leaving, first her freshman year at university, then a marriage (while barely unpacked from moving-in to the marital home).

Tanya Levin makes the point that she was, at this stage, a classic cult-survivor: as she puts it, ’socially autistic’. Without the insulating factor of the Hillsong machine, Tanya Levin was among the most vulnerable. An alternative host structure came along in the form of the Salvation Army and the expiatory plunge into studying social work.

The Salvos are seen as a good haven for troubled people, and thus it appears to have been for Tanya Levin. She speaks of seeing some of the core values of Christianity at work among the Sallies. Then again, Salvos wear drab uniforms, but Houston was moving in a different direction…

…a ponytail, just like all the other pastors. I told (friend) Jewels it was a Colombian drug dealer look, because they were all starting to go bald at the same time.

There were only a few thousand people at Brian’s church. And there he was with a mobile phone. And a ponytail. And a coldness I sensed where he felt one step further away. I assumed it was me; I was the one who had left, after all. I never said Brian can’t have a mobile. It’s just a moment I had when I knew things were different.

And behind the scenes, things had indeed changed.

Not long before, leadership had decided that paying rent for a building was money down the drain, and with a fast-growing church it was time to be financially solid. Pastor Phil Pringle had been impressed by American Howard Cargill’s fundraising presentation to his congregation at Christian City Church and recommended that Brian meet with Cargill. `You don’t make money out of offerings, Brian,’ Phil is reported to have said, `you make it from bible colleges.’ Educational institutions, any buildings that are deemed for education, are the ones that get the biggest tax breaks.

The “Word Of Faith” movement, also referred to as “name it and claim it”, deserves a lengthy article, or series of articles, all to itself. The interested are directed here or to the excellent book “A Different Gospel”, by D R McDonnell.

I didn’t know my parents’ own church was saturated with the same ideas. I had no idea that the Treats and the Houstons were riding high on the Copeland trail, much as Brian denied the similarities. And I never guessed they could win with that approach. My Year 8 science teacher had told me Jesus was practically a communist. Not any more. Australia was in for a brand-new Jesus, one wearing Gucci loafers where his sandals used to be..

As Hillsong’s decline into material and worldly matters continued, so Levin’s difficulties grew, with a relationship (and eventually a child) with an artist who had a few issues (psychological or spiritual depending on your viewpoint).

Readers may wish to contrast the shame and consequences of Levin’s loving, honest intentions with the “damage control” events in chapter 11, referred to earlier in the review.

In her social work studies, Levin was dealing with the subject of child sexual assault: the idea of an entire congregation being ‘groomed’ for compliance, as a predator does with a child, occurred to Levin.

I ran up to my lecturer the next time I saw her. `Is it possible,’ I dared, `to groom an entire congregation?’

There seemed no other way to explain the standing ovation.

`Of course it is,’ she answered.

Had Brian done it on purpose? Who knows? Perhaps he had simply learnt at his father’s knee how to get trusting people to comply with his demands. Except his father’s dynamics had affected individuals. Brian’s decisions were to affect multitudes.

There are darker tales: the story of Hillsong’s “Hillsong Emerge” charity arm and the Koori Funding affair in which the church was stripped of a $414,479 Federal grant after it falsely claimed the support of a western Sydney Aboriginal group to win the money.

The black art of PsyOps, too, is mentioned:

They tell you about an art class, or a mothers’ group, or a lifestyle course they go to where the people are friendly, particularly to newcomers. This is called `love bombing’ according to cult psychologist Dr Margaret Singer. The flooding of attention, flattery and companionship is not as spontaneous as it seems but is rather a means to smother recruits and new members and to offer them acceptance. As Ian West MP explained in the NSW parliament: `I am also concerned about some practices at Hillsong in regard to “shining”, which is an intense and concerted show of feigned affection by a group of people towards an individual whom they seek to recruit or otherwise influence.’

The people who are the most likely to get into such discussions with strangers are overwhelmingly people who are going through some sort of transitional stage in their life. This is why university evangelism is so strong. Eighteen-year-olds with freedom are often able for the first time to create their own belief systems. The next most common time in which an adult converts is after a relationship breakdown. While anyone can be seduced by a charismatic personality, recruitment is much more probable if you were questioning your own truth anyway.

The black and whites of fundamentalist Christianity make it easily digestible for people who are in any way psychologically disadvantaged. The message is simple, repetitive and emotionally based.

A Christian psychologist colleague of Levin called Hillsong a cult. As Levin says, ‘It all comes down to what you consider to be an individual’s capacity to consent.’

There is an interesting point-by-point dissection of Hillsong against Lifton’s eight steps for thought reform.

Music is a large part of Hillsong’s “milieu control” effort, and the style and content of Hills music contrasts ironically with the album-burnings presided over by some of the leadership in earlier days.

Piece by piece, the preaching proportion of the stage was reduced, and the musical elements expanded. The pulpit is now the visitor to a platform arranged around instruments and sheet-music stands. Hillsong’s new building was acoustically designed for album recordings.

Hillsong has done for Christian music what the Dixie Chicks did for country and western: made it blond, sexy and mainstream. This is no accident. As the Hillsong music conference became more successful, so did the `church’. When musical director Geoff Bullock left in 1995, it was a perfect opportunity to throw young, fair, female Darlene Zschech out of the back-up frying pan and into the leaders’ fire. The gracious and lovely Darlene replaced Geoff’s masculine profile on the frontline with one that had never been so damn cute. Darlene is now an international Christian star in her own right, a preacher, and still calls Hillsong church home.

Neither Darlene nor any of the spin-off music ministries were around for Hillsong’s real `praise and worship’ beginnings. Geoff Bullock and some friends were dope-smoking musicians before they met Jesus. They used to sit around and try to recreate the music of ELO and Genesis. When they became Christians, Geoff simply recreated the same music style for `praise and worship’. As the eighties progressed, music teams adapted to the tastes of the public using similar styles and riffs. Pub rock was big in Australia at the time, and the music team used as much of it as they could to keep the crowds rolling to church.

Levin is not without humour. Witness these extracts from a handy AOG-to-English glossary provided in the book:

Manifest: To behave as if demons are controlling you, for example, `I showed my parents my bad report card and they started manifesting’

Spiritual battle: Conflict with those who won’t think like you or your interpretation of the bible

Grace: The whitewash process by which we only talk about the positive and no one has to be accountable for anything, for example, `When are you going to get a hold of the concept of grace?’

Suffering for Jesus: Missing your connecting flight

On fire for God: Totally brainwashed and ready to go to bible college

Bible college: Tax haven

There is much to inflame the feminist, with tales of suppression of strong women unless (like Bobbie Houston) they are appendage of an alpha male. (There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, here is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. – Galatians 3:28) Only some are more equal than others, even when it comes to men…

Fortunately, there are no homos at Hillsong. There weren’t in the Garden of Eden and there sure won’t be any in heaven. This raises some obvious concerns. Heaven is going to be full of monogamous heterosexuals with no interior design sense. The venue will be lit with fluorescent lighting and the catering will be homestyle rather than gourmet.

Truly, it’s good to know that there are no homosexuals actually standing next to you in church. The way you can tell is that almost everyone is married. Or wants to be. And has children. Anyone who isn’t married hasn’t found the right girl, but in God’s time they will.

These ideas underpin the huge rate of suicide and attempted suicide in fundamentalist churches all around the world. There is no coming out. Ever.

One of Levin’s female friends was told to cut off contact with the author by a domineering husband, who then intercepted and terminated telephone contact. But it’s not all personal petty stuff: somebody’s got to be taking care of business:

And it’s all tax-free!

Imagine if you could run a financial institution under these conditions. You can and the AoG does. On the Australian Assemblies of God website, an investment account is advertised brightly flashing higher interest rates than competitor banks. Lower interest rates on home loans might be helped by the tax breaks as well as the supportive attendance of the prime minister and the federal treasurer at the primary place of business.

. . .

This company has also branched out into mortgages and superannuation. No tax. All completely legal. The fund reserves the right to refuse investment with anyone. The amassing of Christian wealth has begun.

The investments are said to be low risk and high liquidity, such as fleet cars and real estate. It’s not clear how many properties are owned by the pastors in the church’s names. Or in one of the business’s names.

Hillsong runs too many other companies and incorporated associations to list. Some, such as Colour Your World, don’t seem to be registered businesses at all, while others such as Australian Christian Women NSW Incorporated don’t seem to do anything at all except organise conferences, yet they are entitled to all the charitable tax concessions.

Leadership Ministries Incorporated (LMI) is the incorporated association through which Brian and Bobbie’s pay is channelled. LMI manages the Houstons’ properties. Having at least twice sold real estate to their own company, they make a taxfree profit on properties they can keep using. There is also a Life Ministries Inc. in Western Australia which receives the same tax concessions.

Educational institutions are, as mentioned, also exempt from sales tax. Any church, or even an ice-skating rink, could be used as a bible college auditorium either now or in the future. Thus, any purchases made on behalf of this college are also tax-free. Which is strange given that Hillsong rents its current meeting place out to corporate companies privately.

God outdoes Mammon at his own game. There’s even a quaint black-money spinner called the “love offering”. Meanwhile, Hillsong, the AOG and like-minded evangelicals are also leveraging those riches into temporal power.

The International Assemblies of God Conference 2005 was held at Sydney’s Hillsong Church. Its theme was `Take the Nation, Shake the World’. It got me thinking. If Sydney’s Lakemba Mosque held a conference for all its international leaders and called it `Take the Nation, Shake the World’, there’d be more specially trained police doing overtime than in a month of Sundays.

The Family First party, despite avowals of not being AOG or Hillsong-connected, is.

The members of the party are the staff and friends of Brian (Houston).

(If you thought, “He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy!” you’re by no means alone.)

As Job’s missus tells him: “Curse god and die”… Post-Hillsong depression is a common ailment. Geoff Bullock (see earlier in this review) suffers. Levin herself tried for closure after her disillusionment and leaving, to be met with an escalation of stonewalling, up to and including being threatened with police and frog-marched from the premises.

Once you know the magician’s tricks, the show’s over. Initially, I was amazed by the nonsense that poured out of their mouths: illogical, irrational arguments, sourceless claims, biblical malapropisms, dreary personal anecdotes, all coated with some maple syrup Jesus songs. There was nothing `spiritual’ going on.

This book has something for the scholar of religion. It has content vital to those interested in politics, the psychology of cults, economists, and a valuable voice of reason and balance for those considering one of life’s larger questions: whether God is in the temple changing money, or indeed, if God can be bothered.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 1:25 am and is filed under "Brian Houston", "Geoff Bullock", "People In Glass Houses", "Tanya Levin", Politics, charismatic churches, ex-charismatic, ex-church, fundamentalism, hillsong, religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.