Three reviews in one! Enough to make you break out in unholy ditty to the glory of texts that question the power of religion…
I first learned of the Hillsong Church via two sources: one was Peter Bowditch’s Millenium Project site and an interview with Tanya Levin by Andrew Denton on Enough Rope – which is featured here in transcript and video form.
Later, another reference came to my attention in the form of an affectionate ditty by Tim Minchin done for Adam Hill’s show ‘Spicks and Specks’ called ‘The Adam Hillsong’. Australians have a habit of unabashed nose-thumbing in comedy skits – just see what the Chaser boys did to John Edward….
But joke-references aside, the Hillsong church seems to be a worrying little group and the experiences of former member, Tanya Levin, is documented in her book People in Glass Houses: An Insider’s Story of a Life In & Out of Hillsong.
From the Sydney Morning Herald interview of Tanya Levin:
Growing up in Cherrybrook [NSW, Australia] in the 1980s, Tanya Levin was the sort of teenager “that fundamentalist parents longed for”. She was well-behaved, earnest and unworldly, immersed in the youth group at Hills Christian Life Centre. But psychologically Levin suffered a great deal and soon after she finished school her life “mutated into a Christian horror movie”.
An Australian cult? Levin reflects upon the 8-point guide given by Robert Lifton to spotting a cult and concludes that it indeed meets the criterion. Her story is most definitely a memoir of her experiences, particularly poignant since since she was involved with the group during its very early stages and got to see how it progressed from one small gathering in a suburban building to the mega-group ‘happy clappy’ and the scandalous behaviors and massive funding siphoning that it masks underneath the tuneful hymns. Highly personal and a ‘it happened to me’ attitude throughout, with well-researched details that Levin apparently tried to communicate to former friends – “I had always liked Chris, but I noticed that her eyes had become glazed. New Chris was here.”
Not unlike the tales we hear from Anonymous about Scientology, Levin details the dangers of donating money to Hillsong and the impact it’s had on her family and others. There’s the notion of ‘prosperity theology’ (‘God wants me to have all the congregation’s money!’), there’s internet-paedophilia danger tales, sex (the misconduct of leaders Frank Houston and Pat Mesiti) glossolalia and even misogynistic treatment of female members (the old ‘boys will be boys’ attitude). Seriously, if this wasn’t happening in my country, I’d be thinking it was an upcoming series on Showtime that would hit our cable stations. I found this a quick, page-turning read and certainly worth checking out if you’re wondering about the subtle impact of fundamentalism in Australia since the 1980s.
Fellow Australian and skeptic Robyn Williams is the host of a great many great shows on ABC Radio – I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a few readers of this blog download his programs like The Science Show, Ockham’s Razor and In Conversation.
His book Unintelligent Design – Why God Isn’t as Smart as She Thinks She Is gives a pithy rundown of the state-of-play regarding creationism’s bastard child of Intelligent design. “The means are devious, the arguments deceitful and the consequences profound.” I see a kinship with Levin’s point about the “powerful men causing misery ‘in the name of God’” is much to blame. Of particular interest are chapters one to five which give an excellent rundown of the ID argument with the main players Behe, Dembski, the Dicovery Institute Centre and Phillip Johnson.
Halitosis, farting, vaginal discharge, reflux, snoring, rheumatism, warts, smelly armpits, varicose veins, menopause, brewer’s droop … these are not the marks of a designer at the top of his game.
Great relevant Australian references included – I think this country gives some excellent rebuttal against the notion of ID. This book was my first firm introduction to what such groups were on about and Williams deftly dissolves their cases with a good helping of humor. I think in many ways it’s one of the best ways to handle the threat that faces the education system, by being less afeared and more courageously bemused, which is well demonstrated in this book amongst the very biting attack on the creationist claims.
Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up by John Allen Paulos is another book that you might see about, but from the USA. And it has the same sort of brisk and entertaining style as Robyn Williams, but with humor too. You
In the form of musings, there are refutations of the twelve arguments for the existence of God (‘golden oldies to contemporary beat’ as it were). It’s broken into three parts, with four arguments apiece – taking traditional stances (ontological, argument from design); subjective and psycho-mathematical (Pascal’s wager is one that has always bugged me and he explains it very well).
Embedding God in a holy book’s detailed narrative and building an entire culture around this narrative seem by themselves to confer a kind of existence on him. Holidays, traditions, ideals, cultural identities, as valuable as they occasionally might be, all seem to add to the unwarranted presuppositions underlying them. Their familiarity also serves to inure us to the vindictive, petty, and repellent aspects of the God character. [p. 62]
Oh, and thank hades he tackles sodding Bible codes. They really irk me. In fact, they irk me enough that I was quite gleeful upon finding a refutation of a ‘Bacon Code’ that someone was using to question the authorship of Shakespeare’s writings… skim through it and you’ll see the argument that is being built.
In Irreligion, there’s a smattering of relevant current issues (as demonstrated in the Point of Inquiry interview he did) and includes, as you might expect from Paulos’ background, lots of little mathematical factoids throughout. I would probably suggest this as a useful text to extract items for a logic class to, with the breakdown of the arguments given. It’s not preachy or vindictive, but well-formulated and something I would certainly recommend to a young person who wanted a basic guide (not unlike Atheism from the Very Short Introduction series that I’ve brought to Philosophy and Ethics group meetings).
Good reading, great reflections – check them out!
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