HillSong Church: Christianity for the material age?

[UNIT]

Dont know how many of you guys watch the ABC but this Monday night on Australian Story (8.00pm) there is a feature story on the Senior Pastor of Australia's largest and most attended Christian church, Hillsong Church, Brian Houston. In the commercial that has been airing to promote this programme, a woman beaming from ear to ear states that 'Hillsong is a church for the material age'. I found this most interesting considering that Brian Houston has also been the author of a book titled 'How To Make More Money'. Having done an amount of research on the Pentecostal/Revivalast Church movement in Australia for a University project a few years back, it struck me how money obsessed the people who attend these types of churches really are. Ive even attended a few of these 'services' for a number of these churches in WA, and it is most eye opening, albeit for the wrong reasons. There was no one there, man woman or child, who didnt look as if they hadnt come straight from a photo shoot for the latest David Jones/Jag or Benneton catalogue. The church carparks would of blown your mind. Everyone's shoes were shiny. Everyones haircuts looked ridiculosuly expensive. The service seemed more about using loud, hook filled, repetitive music to create some kind of mob euphoria where people were in tears and collapsing in the front row. Was it Jesus doing this? Somehow i doubted it. Was it the sense of being in there with 2000 other similarly attired, similar looking 'believers' all letting themselves go? Most probably. The more sedate traditional aspect of the service (the sermon) was more about hysterical talk of those not being born again, and those not 'sewing in', roasting for all eternity in a lake of fire. Talk of 'end days' and not being unevenly 'yoked' by being mates with unsaved people, which sounded suspiciously like some demented kind of theological snobbery. Then there was the grandiose talk of 'saving' Africa with shoeboxes full of powdered milk, antiseptic cream, old glasses and old medications. Strange how there was little talk of saving the 'lost' in their own midst. The homeless in Australia. The poor in Australia. The refugees these people helped step on by re electing John Howard. Im sure to the Hillsong WASP brigade they would probably smell too much or something.

These money and possesion obsessed people need to be exposed for what they are. Jesus was in there wiping the brows of lepers. Befriending prostitutes. Dressed in rags in the process. He didnt ride a top of the range Donkey. He was about forgiveness and compassion. Not 'making more money'. Someone needs to tell the Brian Houstons and the upper middle class types that are lapping up the 'looks like me, thinks like me' protective bubbles that are being created across the cities of Australia as much.

Australian Story, 8.00pm, Monday Night. ABC TV.

 

[dan warna]

revisionist christianity
about as valid as OBL's version of Islam.

 

[UNIT]

I remember seeing on TV, before the last election, the Hillsong gang were going off their nuts when Peter Costello took the stage of their church and started rhapsodizing about how a Labor vote would equal higher interest rates, higher taxes on luxury goods and the continued perversion of 'mainstream' society. Truly scary stuff when you think that moron will probably be our next PM. Id take his brother leading us anyday, over that heartless, economic rationalist, neo liberal piece of sxxx.

 

[MSR273]

What are you on about here Unit, if you want to see true wealth then have a look at the vatican. Christian churches have always been about accumulating wealth, and over the centuries, they have done a very good job. The whole greed obsession is what turned Martin Luther off the Roman Catholics.

 

[FIGJAM]

"The meek shall inherit the Earth" - Jesus Christ

"There's a lady who'd sure all that glitters is gold an she's buying a Stairway to Heaven." - Robert Plant

I think there's something in that for all of us.

 

[Former]

Religion is a crock. We all know it, deep down in that little part of our rational brains that has survived the onslaught of "globalisation", marketing hype and political hysteria.

Open your mind to the truth that no matter what you do, you're just going to end up rotting in a box.

Just accept it and help those around you to be happy in themselves.

 

[MightyFighting]

"The meek shall inherit the Earth" - Jesus Christ

I'm glad they're getting something, 'cause they have a hell of a time.

 

[rick James]

I remember seeing on TV, before the last election, the Hillsong gang were going off their nuts when Peter Costello took the stage of their church and started rhapsodizing about how a Labor vote would equal higher interest rates, higher taxes on luxury goods and the continued perversion of 'mainstream' society. Truly scary stuff when you think that moron will probably be our next PM. Id take his brother leading us anyday, over that heartless, economic rationalist, neo liberal piece of sxxx.

think you're going over the top there UNIT.

Costello is infinitely more compassionate than our current PM.

Economic rationalist, how is that an insult anyway? Would you rather e be economically delusional?

Neo Liberal? as in, modern/current day liberal? Would you prefer he be a liberal of hte past and start a new white Australia policy?

 

[rick James]

Religion is a crock. We all know it, deep down in that little part of our rational brains that has survived the onslaught of "globalisation", marketing hype and political hysteria.

Open your mind to the truth that no matter what you do, you're just going to end up rotting in a box.

Just accept it and help those around you to be happy in themselves.

got any proof of that Adrian?

Or just opinion dressed up as fact?

 

[dan warna]

think you're going over the top there UNIT.

Costello is infinitely more compassionate than our current PM.

Economic rationalist, how is that an insult anyway? Would you rather e be economically delusional?

Neo Liberal? as in, modern/current day liberal? Would you prefer he be a liberal of hte past and start a new white Australia policy?

costello >> howard

don't think costello has the rat cunning or the balls to control the liberal party though.

I think Costello while a clever lad, might be a PM like John Cain jnr was a premier and the party would run riot over him.

 

[Contra Mundum]

Excerpt from George Monbiot [on the money again]:

Puritanism was primarily the religion of the new commercial classes. It attracted traders, money lenders, bankers and industrialists. Calvin had given them what the old order could not: a theological justification of commerce. Capitalism, in his teachings, was not unchristian, but could be used for the glorification of God. From his doctrine of individual purification, the late Puritans forged a new theology.

At its heart was an “idealization of personal responsibility” before God. This rapidly turned into “a theory of individual rights” in which “the traditional scheme of Christian virtues was almost exactly reversed”. By the mid-17th Century, most English Puritans saw in poverty “not a misfortune to be pitied and relieved, but a moral failing to be condemned, and in riches, not an object of suspicion … but the blessing which rewards the triumph of energy and will.”(6)

It wasn’t hard for them to make this leap. If the Christian life, as idealised by both Calvin and Luther, was to concentrate on the direct contact of the individual soul with God, then society, of the kind perceived and protected by the medieval Church, becomes redundant. “Individualism in religion led … to an individualist morality, and an individualist morality to a disparagement of the significance of the social fabric”.(7)

To this the late Puritans added another concept. They conflated their religious calling with their commercial one. “Next to the saving of his soul,” the preacher Richard Steele wrote in 1684, the tradesman’s “care and business is to serve God in his calling, and to drive it as far as it will go.”(8) Success in business became a sign of spiritual grace: providing proof to the entrepreneur, in Steele’s words, that “God has blessed his trade”. The next step follows automatically. The Puritan minister Joseph Lee anticipated Adam Smith’s invisible hand by more than a century, when he claimed that “the advancement of private persons will be the advantage of the public”.(9) By private persons, of course, he meant the men of property, who were busily destroying the advancement of everyone else.

 

[Qsaint]

Hillsong = The Enron Religion

No substance and all about the money for the few

 

[dan warna]

baaaa baaaa baaaa

the shepherd gathers his flock and fleeces them

baaaaa baaaa baaaa

 

[The Legend]

I read that they treat the Bible as the literal translation of the word of God.

In that case;

"It is easier for a Camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to walk through the gates of Heaven!"

That's what our Reverend used to teach us anyway.

 

[rick James]

I read that they treat the Bible as the literal translation of the word of God.

In that case;

"It is easier for a Camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to walk through the gates of Heaven!"

That's what our Reverend used to teach us anyway.

that's what I was taught also. That it's ok to be rich, but that charity and distribution of wealth was hte only way for a rich man to get to heaven.

 

[Contra Mundum]

What about this from Luke:6] Magnficat [/size](Luke 1:46-55 NAB)

"And Mary said: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.

For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.

The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him

He has shown might with his arm, dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.

He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly.

The hungry he has filled with good things; the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped Israel his servant, remembering his mercy, according to his promise to our fathers, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Pretty unequivocal if you ask me!

​

 

[Former]

got any proof of that Adrian?

Or just opinion dressed up as fact?

Go to a cemetary. Lots of people rotting in boxes. Proof at last! Go and be happy.

 

[rick James]

Go to a cemetary. Lots of people rotting in boxes. Proof at last! Go and be happy.

I don't think any religion says our physical body floats up and chills in the clouds with their god of choice. Aren't you immature today Adrian? I'm impressed.

 

[Contra Mundum]

I don't think any religion says our physical body floats up and chills in the clouds with their god of choice. Aren't you immature today Adrian? I'm impressed.

Sad to say the last infallible utterance of Pope Pius XII was that Mary skyrocketed up to heaven body and soul so that she would not be worm food!

 

[rick James]

Sad to say the last infallible utterance of Pope Pius XII was that Mary skyrocketed up to heaven body and soul so that she would not be worm food!

dude, the pope's human, he's gunna make stupid comments on his deathbed just like the rest of us.


once when I was high I thought I was mickey Mouse. do i still think I'm mickey mouse now? of course not.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

dude, the pope's human, he's gunna make stupid comments on his deathbed just like the rest of us.


once when I was high I thought I was mickey Mouse. do i still think I'm mickey mouse now? of course not.

serious philosophical question: were u, during your impaired frame of mind, find yourself attracted to minnie. does she go freeball like mickey?

 

[rick James]

serious philosophical question: were u, during your impaired frame of mind, find yourself attracted to minnie. does she go freeball like mickey?

I was too busy laughing at hte sound of my helium enhanced voice to think of minnie.

 

[Freo Big Fella]

It's more like Christianity for the Modern Right, all the demonisation of minorities and fire and brimstone on the sinners stuff without any of that sissy "social justice and love thy neighbour crap".

 

[rick James]

It's more like Christianity for the Modern Right, all the demonisation of minorities and fire and brimstone on the sinners stuff without any of that sissy "social justice and love thy neighbour crap".

I itnk you mean the far right. the modern right is pretty much.. yep lets have social justice, but i still want two cars and an investment property. Least the way i see it.

 

[MightyFighting]

I itnk you mean the far right. the modern right is pretty much.. yep lets have social justice, but i still want two cars and an investment property. Least the way i see it.

You left out, "let's ******** up the public services."