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      How Hillsong, a Hip Megachurch, Became Entangled in Scandal

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      A new documentary series explores the history of Hillsong, known for its celebrity congregants and fashionable trappings before being struck by a series of scandals.The global megachurch Hillsong was known for its hipster trappings, celebrity congregants and wildly popular worship music in the 2010s, but in recent years it has been more closely tied to a series of scandals, including the firing of its charismatic celebrity pastor, Carl Lentz, for “moral failures.”A four-part documentary series, “The Secrets of Hillsong,” premieres on FX on Friday and delves into the turmoil. The series, which is based on a 2021 article in Vanity Fair magazine, features the first interview with Mr. Lentz since he was fired in 2020.Here’s how the trouble unfolded.Why was Hillsong so popular?Brian Houston and his wife, Bobbie, founded Hillsong in Australia in 1983 and opened its first United States branch in New York in 2010. The church was a member of the Australian branch of the Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God, before it formed its own denomination in 2018.Hillsong’s expansion into the United States built on its enormous success in presenting worship music. Its services drew in young people in big cities, where services were held in concert venues, such as Irving Plaza and the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York. The congregants were fashionable and included celebrities such as Justin Bieber, Kevin Durant and Vanessa Hudgens.Mr. Lentz, the lead pastor of Hillsong’s New York branch, also became a celebrity.This hip veneer suggested that Hillsong supported a more progressive form of Evangelicalism, but the church was criticized for its position on L.G.B.T.Q. rights. In an August 2015 blog post, the church’s founder, Mr. Houston, said that gay people were welcome at Hillsong, but that it did “not affirm a gay lifestyle.”Carl Lentz: “hypepriest”Mr. Lentz mingled with celebrities including Mr. Bieber, whom he baptized in the bathtub of an N.B.A. player’s home. In 2017, GQ magazine called Mr. Lentz a “hypepriest” to reflect his trendy wardrobe, which included aviator glasses, skinny jeans and designer sneakers. He spoke frequently about racial inequality and in 2016 declared his support for the Black Lives Matter movement.It all came to a halt when he was fired from Hillsong in November 2020. The church said that his termination had followed discussions about “leadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures.” Mr. Lentz said on Instagram shortly afterward that he had been “unfaithful in my marriage, the most important relationship in my life.” His wife, Laura Lentz, was also a Hillsong pastor.Since then, he has stayed out of the spotlight. Last week, he said in an Instagram post that his wife and children had been his “only priority” for the past three years.“Part of the healing from that heartache led us to the decision to be a part of a documentary that we do not control, that we don’t have any say in and that we haven’t even seen yet,” he said.He now works at Transformation Church in Tulsa, Okla.Carl Lentz was once the lead pastor of the Hillsong branch in New York but was fired in 2020 after what the church called “moral failures.”Andrew White for The New York TimesWhat happened after Carl Lentz left?More turmoil. Hillsong’s founder, Mr. Houston, resigned in March 2022 after the church said that an internal investigation had found that he behaved inappropriately toward two women, breaching the church’s code of conduct.He had already stepped away from his ministry duties in January 2022 to fight a criminal charge accusing him of concealing child sexual abuse by his late father, Frank Houston. Brian Houston has denied the allegations. The case is still in the courts, The Australian Associated Press reported.In March, Mr. Houston said he had been charged with drunken driving in the United States in February 2022. Mr. Houston said that at the time “it seemed like all hell had broken loose within Hillsong church.”Mr. Houston did not respond to a request for comment. In a video posted on his social media accounts in November, he criticized Hillsong’s leadership for how it had handled the allegations of misconduct made against him.“I didn’t resign because of my mistakes,” he said. “I resigned because of the announcements and statements that had been made.”What is Hillsong like today?In March 2022, nine of the 16 Hillsong churches in the United States cut ties with the organization, abruptly shrinking the church’s American presence. Hillsong’s website says it has seven churches in the United States, as well as locations in more than two dozen other countries.The website also says that about 150,000 people worldwide attend its services weekly, but that is an estimate the church has been using since before the pandemic. Hillsong did not respond to questions about current attendance figures.The documentary premiering on Friday includes interviews with congregants and looks at the history of the church’s relationship with money, sex and God. More

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      Day 25: That Time an Orthodox Jew Celebrated Christmas

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      The first and only time that Alex Edelman’s family celebrated Christmas, their tree was topped not by a star, but a teddy bear wearing a yarmulke.Mr. Edelman, who was 7 or 8 at the time — he doesn’t remember the exact year — was also wearing a yarmulke. All of his male family members were. Mr. Edelman, 33, grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home in Brookline, Mass., and he says his family’s one-night fling with Christmas, which he chronicled with withering precision in his recent Off Broadway comedy show “Just For Us,” was a thoroughly Jewish endeavor.The story has become an integral part of Mr. Edelman’s comedy routine: A non-Jewish friend of Mr. Edelman’s mother had a tragic year, and no one to celebrate Christmas with. So Mr. Edelman’s mother decided that, religion notwithstanding, she would do a mitzvah — the Jewish concept of a good deed — and invite her to celebrate with them. In order to make that happen, of course, she’d need stockings, cookies for Santa, and that ever-important tree.“So we had Christmas,” Mr. Edelman says in his act. “We did a pretty good job, for Jews. We went whole-hog, except no hog. Kosher Christmas.”By decking their halls, Mr. Edelman said, they were performing an essential Jewish act: welcoming the stranger into their home, with love and open hearts.On Christmas morning, Mr. Edelman and his younger brother opened presents with their parents and Kate, their non-Jewish friend, who had spent the night and gone to bed delighted by the celebration. The brothers then headed off to school, as the Jewish day school that they attended was not closed on Christmas Day. Later that evening, their father would get a phone call from the school principal, who was deeply concerned. The Edelman brothers, it seemed, had been telling other students that Santa Claus had visited their home. Why would the Edelmans allow Christmas into their life? Mr. Edelman’s father was quick to answer: Clearly, he told the school principal, you don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas.“It was a moment of great parenting. Not to give too much credit to my parents, but all credit to my parents,” Mr. Edelman said in an interview. “The only thing that is universally Jewish is intentionality. You cannot have Judaism without intention. And what’s so Jewish about this event is there was so much empathy, but also much intentionality, when my parents decided to do this.”These days, the story remains Mr. Edelman’s favorite comedic bit in his show, “because afterward people tell me their own stories of human kindness,” he said. “It highlights what I love about my Jewish values, with empathy as the true north. It’s a good demonstration of how Jewish values can be applicable, even when you’re celebrating Christmas.” More

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      National Endowment for the Humanities Announces $31.5 Million in Grants

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      The third round of funding for the year will support 226 projects across the country.A PBS documentary on the 400-year history of Shakespeare’s plays, a New York Public Library summer program for educators on efforts to secure equitable access to education in Harlem in the 20th century, and research for a book on the history of red hair are among 226 beneficiaries of new grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on Tuesday.The grants, which total $31.5 million and are the third round awarded this year, will support projects at museums, libraries, universities and historic sites in 45 states and Washington, D.C., as well as in Canada, England and the Netherlands.Such projects include a documentary, to be co-produced by Louisiana Public Broadcasting, about the Colfax Massacre — named after the town and parish where dozens of former slaves were killed during Reconstruction. Another, at Penn State, uses computational methods to analyze the clouds in landscapes by John Constable and to trace the adoption of his Realist techniques by other 19th-century European artists. Funding will also go toward research for a book examining how different cultures have envisioned Jesus, both in his own time and throughout history, by Elaine Pagels, a historian of religion at Princeton University.Shelly C. Lowe, the endowment’s chairwoman, said in a statement that the projects, which include educational programming for high school and college students, “will foster the exchange of ideas and increase access to humanities knowledge, resources and experiences.”In New York, 31 projects at the state’s cultural organizations will receive $4.6 million in grants. Funding will support the creation of a new permanent exhibition exploring 400 years of Brooklyn history at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, as well as books about St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York during the height of the AIDS crisis and the Hospital of the Innocents, a 600-year-old children’s care institution in Florence, Italy.Funding will also go toward the development of a podcast about the Federal Writers’ Project, a U.S. government initiative that provided jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression, by the Washington-based Stone Soup Productions. Another grant will benefit a history of the Cherokee Nation being co-authored by Julie Reed, a historian at Penn State, and Rose Stremlau, a historian at Davidson College in North Carolina.The grants will also benefit the Peabody Collections, one of the oldest African American library collections in the country, at Hampton University, and a book by John Lisle on a 1980s lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency over its Cold War-era MK-Ultra program, which involved experiments in mind control. More

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      ‘Faith’ Review: Training to Fight Demons at a Monastery

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      Valentina Pedicini’s final documentary tracks the “Warriors of Light” — their leader, and their monks and mothers, in Italy.The director of this Italian documentary, Valentina Pedicini, died in November, 2020, of liver cancer. That’s a terrible shame for a variety of reasons. Pedicini was, in her too-short career, a remarkably intrepid documentarian. In her 2010 “My Marlboro City,” she investigated the cigarette smuggling trade in her hometown, Brindisi. For “From the Depths” (2013), she accompanied a female miner who works more than 1,500 feet below sea level.“Faith,” her final film, presented in wide-screen black-and-white, kicks off with an explanatory text, telling of how in 1998 a man the audience will know only as The Master founded a monastery of sorts and peopled it with so-called Warriors of Light. These are monks and mothers trained in martial arts, fighting “against demons,” ostensibly “in the name of the Father.”We see these warriors, 20 years after the formation of the group, all dressed in white, under a strobe light, doing a rave-style dance workout. We watch them intone “The Lord’s Prayer” and “Hail Mary” in unison. We see them sharing a pasta dinner, at the end of which all the diners lick their plates clean. We see their shared bathroom and watch them shaving their heads.It’s not long before one starts to wonder just what “Father” these ascetics are working in the name of. One meeting revolves around Gabriele, a monk who has apparently either flirted with or actually bedded every woman in the group. He declines to resign (his behavior is discouraged by the group) and halfheartedly promises to work on a confession. As for The Master himself, he browbeats the women, telling one, “You don’t deserve to be a warrior.”Pedicini structures the movie as an oblique narrative rather than an exposé. And “Faith” is all the more disturbing for that. Clearly this distinctive filmmaker was just getting started.FaithNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Film Movement+. More

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      Chad Kimball Sues ‘Come From Away’ Over His Termination

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      The actor, who is Christian, said in an interview he was let go because of his religious beliefs. The show’s producers declined to comment.A former lead actor in the musical “Come From Away” has sued the show’s producers, claiming that he was let go from the production because of his Christian beliefs.Chad Kimball, 45, a Tony-nominated performer who had been with the show since before its transfer to Broadway in 2017, filed suit this week in New York State Supreme Court, alleging that the production had violated his rights under New York City’s Human Rights Law.In the lawsuit, which was first reported by The New York Post, Kimball claimed he was terminated “wholly or partly” because of his religious beliefs. According to the lawsuit, one of the show’s producers allegedly told him there were concerns about supposed connections between his faith and Christian conservatives connected with the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.Matt Polk, a spokesman for the show, which reopened on Sept. 21, said the producers declined to comment.Kimball, a Broadway veteran described in the lawsuit as “a devout and practicing Christian,” had stirred controversy in November 2020 when he announced on Twitter that he would “respectfully disobey” Washington State’s coronavirus-related restrictions on religious services, including rules forbidding even masked worshipers from singing. At the time, he was living in Seattle, his hometown.“Respectfully, I will never allow a Governor, or anyone, to stop me from SINGING, let alone sing in worship to my God,” Kimball, who had previously had Covid-19, wrote.That statement drew strong criticism from some in the theater industry, including a co-star, Sharon Wheatley, who responded, “I respectfully totally and completely disagree with you.”Kimball said in an interview Friday that it was hurtful to have the initial reaction to his social media posts subsequently “snowball” into discussion of him as a “conservative Christian” whose beliefs were somehow connected with the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he described as “an event I wasn’t even involved with.”“I don’t talk about politics at all,” he said. “The only thing they really know about me for sure is that I’m a Christian.”Before the social media exchanges, the lawsuit said, Kimball, who had appeared in more than 1,000 performances of the show before the shutdown in March 2020, had never received any reprimand or complaint, and had never been told by anyone connected with the show that he “made them feel unsafe.” But subsequently, he “was forced to explain and defend his Nov. 15, 2020, tweet to Defendants’ agents and employees,” the suit claims.Then, on Jan. 18, the suit said, he was contacted by a producer, Susan Frost, who allegedly informed him that there was conversation around his “conservative Christian” faith and his “freedom to believe.”Frost, the suit claims, also mentioned the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and said that there were concerns that “the events at the Capitol, Josh Hawley and the conservative Christian movement were tied together and implied a connection” between Kimball’s faith and the “ideas and actions” of that day.On Jan. 22, according to the lawsuit, Frost told Kimball he would not be invited back to the production, which he was told “needed to focus on bringing the show back together and ensure people’s safety.”At the suggestion of Frost, the suit said, he spoke with the show’s director, Christopher Ashley, on Feb. 2, and asked him if he had been let go because of disagreements with colleagues or his religious beliefs. “In response,” the lawsuit continues, Ashley “stated that it was ‘everything.’”As a result, according to the lawsuit, Kimball was “made to suffer significant economic and professional harm,” as well as “emotional and physical pain and suffering.” The lawsuit is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and lost wages, as well as legal costs.Kimball was nominated for a Tony Award in 2010 for his role in the musical “Memphis.” While he has always been a Christian, the lawsuit said, it was following his recovery from an injury while in the show that he started becoming “more outspoken regarding his beliefs.”In the interview, a joint one with his lawyer, Lawrence Spasojevich of the firm Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, Kimball said he had an inkling that his position with the show might be in jeopardy as early as December 2020 when he contacted the show’s producers to inform them of the tweets and the reaction to them.Kimball, who said he was currently not working, added that negative reactions to his beliefs weren’t new to him. “What was new to me was the idea that a religious belief could be used as fodder for deciding I wasn’t worthy of being a part of the show,” he said. More

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      Bob Abernethy, Longtime Host of PBS Show on Religion, Dies at 93

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      He conceived and produced “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” and was its face for 20 years, after four decades as an NBC News correspondent.Bob Abernethy, who capped a four-decade career as an NBC News correspondent by injecting religion, one of the most under-covered subjects on television, into national programming with a weekly series that ran for 20 years on PBS, died on May 2 in Brunswick, Maine. He was 93.His death, at a heath care facility, was confirmed by his daughter Jane Montgomery Abernethy. The cause was Alzheimer’s dementia.The grandson of a Baptist minister in Washington whose congregation included President Warren G. Harding and Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, Mr. Abernethy had retired from NBC in 1994 after covering the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nascent space program and Congress.He was not ready to stop working, though. Armed with his deep faith, intellectual curiosity and a theology degree he had earned from Yale Divinity School during a one-year leave of absence in 1984, he persuaded WNET, the PBS station in New York, to produce “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly,” a half-hour nonsectarian series that Mr. Abernethy hosted and presided over as executive editor beginning in 1997.Within 10 years of its launch, the show — which Mr. Abernethy had described as “a news program, no preaching” — was airing on 250 public stations nationwide, winning some 200 industry awards. He and his collaborators went on to broadcast regularly until 2017, when he was 89.With the journalist William Bole, Mr. Abernethy edited “The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World,” (2007), an anthology of interview transcripts from the PBS program.“Nothing I have done has been as personally satisfying as founding and working on” the program, he wrote in the introduction to the book, adding, “The main reason for that is the many opportunities the show provides for sitting down with the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu — extraordinary men and women who speak as naturally about their faith and doubt and spiritual practices as they do about the weather.”Mr. Abernethy in an undated photo. He persuaded PBS to produce “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly,” becoming its host and executive producer.David HollowayOther guests included the Dalai Lama, President Jimmy Carter, the Rev. Billy Graham and Jonathan Sacks, at the time the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom.The series covered a wide range of topics, including atheism, abortion, assisted suicide, sexual abuse by clergy and organ transplants.“Finding this line between sensitivity to the spiritual dimensions of a story on the one hand and objective, traditional skepticism is a constant struggle and a very appropriate one, but I think we’ve got it right,” Mr. Abernethy told The Washington Post in 2000. “This is a matter of good reporting. Unless you get the spiritual element of the story, you’re missing something very important. It’s like interviewing Babe Ruth and not asking about hitting.”When “Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly” was approaching the end of its run, Jerome Socolovsky, the editor in chief of Religion News Service, was rueful, telling the news service Current in 2016, “The media landscape will miss this crucial provider of video stories about religion that didn’t favor one or the other but gave viewers a full perspective on religious news developments.”Robert Gordon Abernethy was born on Nov. 5, 1927, in Geneva to Robert and Lois May (Jones) Abernethy. His father worked for the Y.M.C.A.’s international newspaper. After Bob was born, the couple returned to the United States. His father began to teach religion at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., but died of complications of appendicitis in 1930.Bob and his mother moved in with his paternal grandparents in Washington, where his grandfather was senior minister of Calvary Baptist Church. She taught piano at the National Cathedral School.After graduating from the Hill School, he enrolled in Princeton University but interrupted his studies to serve with the American occupying Army in postwar Japan, where he hosted a program for Armed Forces Radio. Returning to college, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from what is now the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.Coming from a family of pastors, he felt “a certain amount of pressure on me to become a minister, too,” he told the website Resources for Christianity in 2013, “but I never heard a call.”Mr. Abernethy married Jean Montgomery in 1951; she died in 1980. In addition to their daughter, Jane, he is survived by his second wife, Marie (Grove) Abernethy, whom he married in 1984; their daughter, Elizabeth C. Abernethy; and four children from Ms. Abernethy’s first marriage. He had homes in Brunswick as well as in Washington and Jaffrey, N.H.Mr. Abernethy was a member of the United Church of Christ. His wife is a member of the Russian Orthodox Church.He joined NBC News after receiving his master’s from Princeton in 1952. Early on he wrote and hosted “Update,” a program for young people, and was later a Washington interviewer for the “Today” show. He anchored the evening news for KNBC in Los Angeles among other assignments.One posting was to Moscow, after he had completed his leave from NBC News to study theology in 1984. Before he left, he recalled: “I ran into a guy I had known who asked me, ‘What’s new?’ I said, ‘I took a year’s leave from NBC and went to divinity school. I got married and we had a baby. What’s new with you?’”He never stopped working. At his death, he was hoping to document the lives of homeless people through video interviews, for a future broadcast. More

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      Director of Amazon's 'Tandav' Cuts Scenes After Pressure From India's Hindu Nationalists

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDirector of Amazon India Drama Cuts Scenes Amid Outcry From Hindu NationalistsFaced with boycotts and criminal complaints, the director of “Tandav” made the edits this week. But that did not appear to satisfy some of the show’s critics, who called for him to be jailed.Supporters of India’s governing Bharatiya Janata Party demonstrated against the Amazon series “Tandav” on Monday in Mumbai.Credit…Indranil Mukherjee/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSuhasini Raj and Jan. 22, 2021Updated 2:20 p.m. ETARPORA, India — The director of a big-budget Amazon web series has bowed to pressure from Hindu nationalists and cut several scenes that they had deemed offensive, demonstrating the sway of a powerful political movement that strives to reshape Indian society.Ali Abbas Zafar, the director of “Tandav,” a gritty political drama, made the edits amid an intensifying outcry about the show and calls for a boycott.Hindu nationalists, including members of the governing Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., have accused Mr. Zafar of insulting Hindu deities and stirring up animosity between Hindus and Muslims and between upper castes and lower castes.Mr. Zafar said on Twitter on Tuesday that the show’s cast and crew had decided to “implement changes to address the concerns raised,” and since then, several scenes have been excised. But on Friday, some critics continued to drum up opposition, calling for Mr. Zafar to be put in jail.Officials at Amazon Prime declined to comment.The creators of “Tandav” have been caught up in the sweeping political and social changes in India driven by a Hindu nationalist movement. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has shouldered aside significant opposition, the movement champions India as a Hindu nation that pushes other groups, including its significant Muslim minority, to the margins.The pressure has extended into culture. In recent years, Hindu nationalists have heavily criticized Bollywood, the central Indian filmmaking industry, for depictions that run counter to their beliefs.Among the cuts made to “Tandav” was a scene in which a university student is seen playing a cursing Lord Shiva, a Hindu god, on a stage. In another scene that was taken out, a fictionalized prime minister speaks derisively to a member of a lower caste.But on Friday, Ram Kadam, a B.J.P. state lawmaker who had filed a criminal complaint against the show’s creators, said the edits were not enough.“This is a fight against the type of people who hurt the religious sentiments of Hindus,” he said. “They must go behind bars.”At least three criminal complaints have been filed, including one that accuses the show of promoting hatred between different religions, a serious crime in India. Already investigators in Uttar Pradesh State, run by one of Mr. Modi’s closest allies, have summoned Mr. Zafar to speak to them.But the true reason for the complaints against “Tandav” may be that the show holds up a mirror uncomfortably close to Indian society and some of the problems blamed on Mr. Modi’s administration. In the opening episode, the show features protesting students and disgruntled farmers, echoing events that have taken place in recent months. (Mr. Zafar has said the show is a work of fiction.)”Tandav” is just one of many recent productions that have provoked the ire of Hindu nationalists. A journalist filed a criminal complaint this week against the makers of “Mirzapur,” another Amazon web series and the name of a midsize town in northern India. The journalist said the series hurt religious and regional sentiments and defamed the town.In recent months, similar pressure has been exerted on Netflix. Several of the platform’s productions have come under attack, including a show that featured a Hindu woman kissing a Muslim man, with a Hindu temple in the backdrop, which Hindus denounced as offensive to their beliefs. Hindu nationalists have tried to shut down interfaith marriages, and recent laws in several of India’s states have targeted interfaith couples.Gaurav Tiwari, an official in the youth wing of the B.J.P. who has filed a complaint against Netflix officials, said the government needed to protect the public from what he described as vulgar and anti-Hindu content. “People have been murdered for cartoons in other religions, and look at what is happening with ours,” Mr. Tiwari said. “If this continues unabated, what will the future generations of Hindus look back on when they see movies like these?”Mr. Tiwari called for the strictest form of punishments against Netflix and Amazon, including banning them from India for a few years.Entertainment industry analysts said the restrictive environment meant that many filmmakers were now shying away from subjects that touched on religion or politics.“This is exactly what this government wants,” said Ankur Pathak, a former entertainment editor at Huffington Post India. “It’s very clear this kind of bullying of streaming platforms is a broader ideological project of the B.J.P. to wipe out any kind of ideological or political critique.”“The internet is the only free form of medium which exists against the present political regime,” he added. “And that makes them very anxious.”Suhasini Raj reported from Arpora, and Jeffrey Gettleman from New Delhi.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More