Hillsong has long been a polarising phenomenon, with some loving the megachurch for the trendy and relatable faith it offers, for its music, or for the cosmopolitan possibilities which it projects, whilst others have criticised it for its accumulation of wealth, for its political influence, for its glossy version of Christianity, or for the theological stances and practices which it embodies. Much of the scholarship that has developed around the church has combined a critical perspective with sympathetic descriptions seeking both to understand the church’s lure and to describe its fit within early 21st-century global, mediatized, and marketised societies. Tom Wagner and Tanya Riches’ (2017) edited collection The Hillsong Movement Examined was one of the first book-length publications to look at Hillsong from an academic perspective, bringing together chapter-length contributions from theological, anthropological, and musicological perspectives. This has been succeeded by monographs from Tom Wagner (2021), focusing on music, branding, and consumer culture at the church, and Miranda Klaver (2021), who employs a lived religion approach to examine Hillsong’s use of media and its cosmopolitan global character. Outside of academia, the highly-public scandals that have emerged around Hillsong over the course of recent years have provoked a proliferation of podcasts, documentaries, and social media conversations, the resignation of key figures, the closing and disaffiliation of a number of congregations, and numerous crises of faith. But they have also provided a challenge to scholars to delve deeper into the darker sides of congregational life and the inequalities, abuses, and exploitation that have grown up as an integral part of the church’s culture and success.
While the research for this book began before the most disruptive scandals broke, it was published some time later. The work thus exists at an inflection point for narratives and research around Hillsong, and Rocha’s narrative does a good job of navigating the tensions surrounding the congregation. Indeed, the gaps that can open up between imagination and reality, between promise and fulfilment, are a central theme of this volume. The book is based on six years of multi-sited ethnographic research which Rocha conducted in Australia and Brazil between 2015 and 2020 as well as online fieldwork which took place both during this period and later on. Rocha’s emphasis on the wider context in which Hillsong is embedded means that participant observation and interview work at Hillsong campuses and events is supplemented by research with groups and individuals that are part of the broader networks surrounding the different Hillsong communities. At the heart of Rocha’s text is a tension between different worlds and the movement between them. We hear about the journeys of young Brazilian Christians as they dream of the world and lifestyle that Hillsong has to offer, as they travel to Australia to experience and be part of that world themselves, as they are confronted with the challenges of navigating a culture that they had previously imagined in somewhat idealised terms, and as they try to navigate and change their Brazilian congregations with somewhat mixed results upon their return.
Throughout the narrative, Hillsong is bound up with imaginations of north and south, equality and hierarchy, and lifestyles and cultures worth aspiring to. This is a book about class and inequality, national differences, and social mobility. For the Brazilians described in the text, Hillsong becomes attractive and desirable primarily as an alternative to the social and religious realities they see around them. It offers an aspirational reality through its less autocratic style, seeming empowerment of the individual, offer of grace, promise of a different lifestyle, and the alternative aesthetics of religion which is an integral part of this promise. For young Brazilian Christians, it embodies the promise of the global north and of an alternative possible society operating according to a different ethical model. In this context, church and the opportunities associated with particular nationalities are closely bound up with one another, and Rocha’s narrative deftly draws together the personal and the political. Aesthetics and lifestyle are bound up with models of power, money, and different ideas about how communities should function.
Importantly, Rocha also describes some of the different ways in which the promise of Hillsong can begin to break down. For some Brazilians who make the move to spend time in Australia, difficulties emerge in the navigation of visa regimes, the challenge of finding work, the need to take care of household chores which they would have not had to do themselves back home, or the expectation of carrying out menial tasks within Hillsong itself. Some struggle with the expectations of Australian nightlife, a sense of downward mobility, or distance from family. Some navigate these differences more successfully than others – and it seems that theology can provide a buffer that allows perseverance and continued belief through a degree of difficulty – but we begin to see a degree of frustration and depression emerging. These challenges continue when they return home and seek to implement aspects of the Hillsong model within congregations that do not always welcome such changes. Rocha’s description of these struggles and disillusionments begins to offer a more critical perspective on the church, offering us not just an idealised Hillsong of the imagination but one firmly bound up with systems from which some are more able to profit than others.
The text benefits from Rocha’s own positioning as an outsider to Christianity and from her anthropological lens. While scholarship nearer to faith might find it easier to see and focus on questions of theology or spirituality, Rocha can move beyond to the broader social, cultural, political, and economic dynamics that feed into them. Religion is not self-contained and set apart from these other spheres but gains an important part of its power through its relationship to broader socio-cultural realities. This sense of the world beyond Hillsong helps build important connections that are likely to be useful in better understanding the increasingly visible alliances between evangelical Christianity and politics in a variety of contexts around the world. At the same time, the contrast between Brazilian and Australian Christianities and cultures helps to make visible the contingency of particular norms, perspectives, and realities. Things that might otherwise fall into the background as a widely-accepted shared reality become easier to question and step back from as a result of the comparison. It is notable, for instance, how some of those described in the text are able to minimise the significance of scandals in a way that others might struggle to precisely because of the way they see Hillsong to embody particular virtues that they find to be absent from other Christian communities around them.
Rocha’s central argument is that:
Hillsong offers young middle-class Brazilians an alternative geography of belonging and the possibility of a cosmopolitan life. It also creates loyal subjects through its exciting, less authoritarian, and what Brazilians deem a more ethical style of Pentecostalism than that in their homeland (viii).