Fairfax's bias against Hillsong...

A short article today reminded me of a campaign by several media outlets in Australia to make Hillsong out to be some sort of cult. Alex Mitchell could bairly disguise his bias against Australia's largest church in his article in today's Sydney Morning Herald. He tried very hard to remove the christianity from the story - no where in the article did he let the reader know that Hillsong was in fact a church - and with the reference to Hillsong's church buildings as 'stadiums', you would be forgiven to come away from the article thinking Hillsong was some sort of sporting team. Many left leaning commentators have their sites trained on this church - in the past few years, I have noticed an increasing tendency to attempt to liken it to a cult or a far right dangerous fundamentalist organisation.

Heavens forbid that Australia's largest church should actually want to build churches that can cater for the several thousand christians that attend each week. $23 million might seem like a lot for a church to own in property and facilities... until you take a look at our older denominations. The catholic, anglican and uniting church organisations hold hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars worth of property and facilites throughout Australia. Hillsong, a church of some 15,000 christians, should expect to be able build churches that can accomodate and cater for its worshippers without cheap criticism from the likes of Mitchell.

Mitchell is yet another journalist that also ignores the fact that Hillsong is but one church of the Assemblies of God (AOG) - an Australian born and bred pentecostal denomination. This isn't a 'lone cult', but the largest of thousands of AOG churches that are in every corner of our nation. Pentecostal churches have more worshippers each Sunday than any other denomination bar the Catholics.

It really is another case of the left being so keen to paint pentecostal and evangelical christians in Australia as a religious right. Family First has been branded a far right political party, despite its support for refugee rights and disapproval of Howard's industrial relations reforms. The left is keen on beating up on a religious right that just does not exist. Hillsong, AOG and Family First all adhere to christian values and beliefs - a belief structure that can neither be pigeon holed in either the right, centre or left areas of politics.