Child sex abuse scandals are bad for a church’s bottom line, and so covering up for bad behavior (a.k.a. Starting in the late ’90s, Brian and the board at Hillsong helped conceal the sex abuse and shielded Frank Houston from prosecution. But the cultural crisis was also rooted in the commission and cover up of child sexual abuse by Brian Houston’s father, Frank Houston, who for decades used his churches in New Zealand and Australia as vehicles of grooming and molesting boys. At the time, leaders and paid staff at Hillsong’s global affiliates exclusively had degrees from Hillsong College the culture was passed on there.
Hillsong says you “catch the culture” in Sydney. In particular, it focuses on its founder, Brian Houston, a mentor to Lentz, who has been the subject of inquiries and investigations in the church’s home base of Australia for several years.Īlex French: The takeaway from our reporting on the Carl Lentz scandal and the toxic culture at Hillsong New York is that the problems in New York were emblematic of a larger cultural crisis at the global megachurch.
#HILLSONG AFTERMATH MEANING SERIES#
The second half of the series traces Hillsong’s path backward from its cultural apex to its early days. Vanity Fair Studios partnered with Scout Productions to continue their investigation, along with director Stacey Lee, for what became the four-part docuseries The Secrets of Hillsong, the final episodes of which will air on FX on Friday and stream on Hulu. As Alex and Dan’s reporting quickly showed, there was much deeper cause for discontent among many Hillsong congregants: allegations of bullying and abuse, pressures to work church functions for no pay, and racial and gender inequities among them.Īs their story went to press for that year’s Hollywood issue, it was clear there was more to say about Hillsong. Even as the scandal played out in the tabloids, it was clear that there was more to the story than a pastor who had failed to live up to the standards that he preached. In the fall of 2020, though, the church abruptly fired Lentz, shortly before news broke of his extramarital affair. His role as Justin Bieber’s pastor of record was a signifier of Lentz’s and Hillsong’s status. Lentz had for years grown his profile as the Australia-based Hillsong’s face in America, leading to its rapid growth in the 2010s, and become something of a crossover celebrity himself in the process. In February of 2021, Vanity Fair published “ Carl Lentz and the Trouble at Hillsong,” by contributing editor Alex French and staff writer Dan Adler, who had spent much of that winter and the previous fall reporting on the celebrity-favorite megachurch.
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