The blessed beset by some
Brian Houston believes in many things: in the literal truth of the Bible; in entertaining the flock; in money, influence and fame. He believes that God chooses some men to be saved and some to be damned, and believes that he, Brian Houston, is one of the former.
financially support the church.” The church immediately denied any illegality and released a statement saying: “The claims made in federal parliament by Mr Andrew Wilkie are out of context and relate to untested allegations made by an employee in an ongoing legal case. These allegations, made under parliamentary privilege, are in many respects wrong, and it is disappointing he made no effort to contact us first.”
Speaking before a congregation last Sunday, Hillsong’s global senior pastor, Phil Dooley, said the church would commission an independent review into the allegations. The church’s founder, Brian Houston, who resigned last year as the church was investigating sexual misconduct allegations against him, tweeted: “Clearly, Andrew
Wilkie MP has used parliamentary privilege to espouse unproven and spurious claims about Hillsong Church that are in the main, either out of context, misleading or false.”
In his speech, Wilkie said, “I’m shocked that, when offered to the ATO, ASIC and ACNC last year under whistleblower legislation, not one of those agencies acted. That is a failure of regulatory oversight every bit as alarming as Hillsong’s criminality.”
Wilkie was mistaken, however. The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), the sector’s federal regulator, issued an “extremely rare” comment about the matter. “Although it was stated in Parliament that the ACNC has not acted, I can confirm that we are investigating concerns raised about Hillsong Church charities,” the ACNC commissioner, Sue Woodward, said in a statement. “Any investigation we undertake must be thorough, comprehensive and consistent with our approach to all investigations. They can be complex and take time to complete.”
Brian Houston believes in many things: in the literal truth of the Bible; in entertaining the flock; in money, influence and fame. He believes that God chooses some men to be saved and some to be damned, and believes that he, Brian Houston, is one of the former.
He believes in the nourishment of the Good Book, and he believes in waterside mansions. He believes that one day He will return and shepherd the good to Heaven, while purging the rest. He believes that we are all in a contract with God, and that if we provide to the Church, then He will provide for us. He believes that God wants us to be rich and happy, and that material wealth is a sign of virtue and piety – of a contract upheld. And Brian Houston believes – or at least he did, before he was removed last year from the church he founded – that the best, most direct way that the faithful could make good with God was to offer their money to Hillsong. His catchphrase is “the best is yet to come”.
Houston believes that his personal success is proof of his divine anointment. He believes that the media’s interest in Hillsong’s opaque finances is cynical – an expression of his country’s contempt for high achievers and for faith itself. Perhaps most of all, Brian Houston believes in the power of a good story – a “narrative” that is both flattering and ruthlessly upheld by loyalists. Until the past two years, he has been remarkably successful at maintaining the story of a wholesome empire, given to sharing God’s Glory, if occasionally besieged by the jealous and religiously intolerant. “Out in the forecourt,” Houston warned his large congregation in 2015, “is a program called A Current Affair. They’re a malicious program. They have a constant agenda against Hillsong. They lie, they’re underhanded. I would encourage every young person not to talk to them, and certainly not talk about things you know nothing about.”
The son of the pastor and serial child rapist Frank Houston – whose crimes Houston is now on trial for concealing – Brian Houston was the only one of five children to ardently follow his father into a life in the church. “I grew up with this passion to serve Jesus,” Houston said in 2015, while promoting his book, Live, Love, Lead. “I think a lot of it then was my father’s influence. I admired him greatly and loved what he did. I literally can’t remember a time when I didn’t think ‘one day I want to preach, and be involved in ministry’. It’s been part of me as long as I can remember.”
In the 1970s, he served his father as assistant pastor at Darlinghurst’s Sydney Christian Life Centre, before he hired a school hall to start his own church, in 1983, called Hills Christian Life Centre. Houston is a Pentecostal, which is not a denomination itself but a movement that stresses the observable manifestation of the Holy Spirit in “gifts” such as healing, exorcism and speaking in tongues. Thus, in that modest school hall in north-west Sydney, and before a small congregation, miracles were witnessed.
Houston was ambitious. In 1991, he established Hillsong Music, a record label given to songs of devotion – it has released at least one album a year since, and in 2018 won a Grammy Award. Hillsong Music was a pivotal moment in Houston’s career, and for the future of the global Pentecostal movement.
From America, Houston borrowed the theatre of charismatic evangelists, while assiduously building a major commercial arm. After a name change, Hillsong Church would eventually generate up to $100 million a year through its CDS, DVDS, films, books, merchandise, concerts and colleges, and find its most receptive audience, and largest flock, in the United States. “When America is strong, the world is a better place,” Houston said in 2019, during a visit to Trump’s White House, but you could invert this easily: Hillsong’s strength depended upon America.
Between 2010 and 2020, Hillsong enjoyed its richest days – a global phenomenon with churches in 30 countries, a weekly congregation of some 150,000 souls, and the attendance of superstars such as Justin Bieber, Kevin Durant and various Kardashians. Houston’s now disgraced protégé Carl Lentz – the often-shirtless pastor, tattooed hipster and confidant of Bieber – opened Hillsong’s first church in New York City in 2010 and became a celebrity himself.
Houston also preached the “prosperity doctrine”, something that has defined Hillsong. It’s a particularly American view with a long history, one that gaudily conflates faith, individualism and grifting, and which sees God as a jealous banker, distributing wealth to the most faithful and cursing the rest. While Hillsong had several lucrative revenue streams, it still encouraged “tithing”, or donations, from its congregants. At Hillsong, this wasn’t seen as an act of charity but a personal investment – God would return their tithings with lavish dividends. “I’ve heard many arguments and teachings why one should or shouldn’t tithe,” Houston said in 2006. “It is sad that there is so much confusion and debate about a simple task of giving 10 per cent of your income to God. I believe confusion often comes from a lack of knowledge, so let’s start by looking logically at what the Bible says … Tithing, I believe, is an eternal principle, like sowing and reaping.”
One Christian teaching might be not to burden God’s poor with financial requests, but this wasn’t a view of Houston, who in 1999 published a book titled You Need More Money, and who preached: “Your words can frame your future! Speak your faith, start seeing miracles … Owner of your first home! Bestselling author … Mother of handsome sons and beautiful daughters! Businessman who is prosperous and fruitful! Speak it into being!”
Hillsong wasn’t just a church, then, but a global entertainment business and investment bank for the faithful. The man running it was driven, acquisitive and ill-tempered. He moved with the bullishness of a man who sought, but never quite received, the blessings of a domineering and manipulative father. Houston could be charming and impulsive, and was long dogged by his fondness for booze. “I openly admit that alcohol has been no friend and I am determined to relegate it to my past,” he said in a statement last year, when he resigned from the church.
The past two years have been blighted for Hillsong. The increasing rivalry between the church’s two great egoists, Houston and Lentz, ended with leaked messages detailing Lentz’s infidelity, and Houston’s sacking of him in 2020 for “leadership issues and breaches of trust, plus a recent revelation of moral failures”.
Several internal investigations, conducted by a New York law firm after Lentz’s sacking, found examples of financial irregularity, labour abuses and sexual assault – a whole network of voluntary labour was frequently exploited, while young and earnest women were preyed upon. “Lentz’s ability to lead so poorly was itself the result of insufficient supervision and accountability applied to Lentz himself,” the report, which was leaked to The Christian Post, read.
“The Australian mother ship appears also to bear some responsibility here, since it never established effective oversight and accountability for the New York Lead Pastor. This lack of oversight permitted Carl Lentz to assume the role of final arbiter of what was proper behavior for everyone in New
York, himself included. With the benefit of hindsight, given Lentz’s personal limitations, this was a recipe for trouble.”
Such were the internal rivalries, high stakes and institutional commitment to controlling the story, that questions remain about how independent the reviews were – and whether their findings were narrowed to minimise scandal and maximise damage against internal enemies.
In 2021, Houston was charged with concealing the crimes of his father, pled not guilty and went on trial last December. That case will conclude this June. Houston said he was surprised when he was first arrested, but the charges were pre-empted in 2015 when the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse reported: “We are satisfied that, in 1999 and 2000, Pastor Brian Houston and the National Executive of the Assemblies of God in Australia did not refer the allegations of child sexual abuse against Mr Frank Houston to the police.”
At the time of his arrest, Houston said he was stepping aside temporarily. But within this great house of God, made in the shadow of his father, things had become unstable and vengeful. The church was leaking conspicuously, and old stories of Houston’s drinking and lechery became public. One year ago, the complaints of two women, in separate incidents from 2013 and 2019, were published. Houston resigned as global senior pastor of Hillsong soon after. “Let me start with the words I want and need most to say – I am so deeply sorry,” his statement read. “To those impacted directly by my actions, I am sorry for the pain I have caused you. To my wonderful, forgiving and gracious family who I love more than anything, I hate hurting you.”
Then last year, Natalie Moses, who had worked at Hillsong’s Sydney headquarters as its fundraising and governance co-ordinator for two years, filed a claim in the Federal
Court that she was unlawfully suspended from her job for providing information about the church to the charities regulator. In her statement of claim, she alleged that she was directed to only partially disclose information to the ACNC, and that she was aware of “illegal and unethical” accountancy. In its defence filing, the church strongly denied any wrongdoing. The case is currently in mediation.
And now there are the Hillsong papers. While Brian Houston profitably sang the prosperity gospel, and preached sun-tanned, Californian positivity, the Good Book’s darker warnings of lust, immodesty and jealous rivalry were undermining his empire. “Sowing and reaping,” thought Houston, “was an eternal principle”, but it’s unclear whether he considered its application to his own earthly deficiencies.
“Monday’s announcement brings an end to 70 years of a highly effective Defence policy, without any discussion with the Australian public or seemingly any awareness within the government … The submarine pact creates risks that, when combined, will actually make Australia less safe.”
The deal is done. On Monday morning in
San Diego, the leaders of the United States, Australia and Britain jointly revealed the key details of Australia’s road to becoming a nuclear power – of sorts. President Joe Biden announced that the US will sell Australia three to five used Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines sometime in the 2030s. The three countries will also design a future boat, the tri-flavour SSN-AUKUS class, which will enter service from some time in the 2040s and extend into the 2050s. Australia will receive about five AUKUS boats by about 2055.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese thanked President Biden for his administration’s willingness to share its nuclear propulsion technology, before – perhaps inevitably – spruiking the jobs that the program will create across the nation. Both leaders stressed that Australia’s submarines will be nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed. The cost is an estimated
$368 billion for an uncertain number of warships whose final arrival may be as long as four decades away.
What Albanese neglected to mention is that the deal effectively makes a massive shift to the foundation of Australia’s longestablished Defence policy. Since the signing of the ANZUS alliance in 1951, the US has willingly borne the burden of providing for Australia’s security. This allowed Australia to minimise the amount it spent on defence while allocating monies to other societal needs. Australian National University scholar Professor John Blaxland has rightly called the Australian Defence Force (ADF) a boutique force comprised of niche capabilities. The ADF contribution to Us-led coalitions has traditionally been quite minimal, noted for being far less than Australia’s economy and population would suggest as achievable.
Defence on the cheap has been the hallmark of Australian security decisions and the US never seemed to object. Monday’s announcement brings an end to 70 years of a highly effective Defence policy, without any discussion with the Australian public or seemingly any awareness within the government. Seduced by a misplaced desire for nuclear-powered submarines, Australia has unilaterally decided to increase its commitment to the alliance.
An increase in commitment is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly if the Australian public agrees. But in this instance the submarine pact creates risks that, when combined, will actually make Australia less safe.
The government has been very clear that the target of the submarine acquisition is an increasingly assertive China. However, China is also Australia’s largest economic partner and responsible for much of the nation’s present wealth. In acquiring these weapons, Australia has sent an unmistakable message to its biggest customer. One risk Australia has accepted is that the submarine deal creates enough jobs in the shipbuilding sector to offset possible losses in mining, agriculture, education and tourism if China decides to spend elsewhere.
Further, the pact is unlikely to result in greater physical security for Australia. Several more Australian communities, in addition to those in Pine Gap, Exmouth and Darwin, will find themselves on a Chinese target list. The government is yet to announce the home of these submarines, but wherever that is will become a legitimate target, as will support facilities.
Of greater significance to Australia’s security is the false claim that these submarines will enable us to deter China from taking actions that are not in our interest. Unfortunately, capability does not equate to deterrence. Rather it is perception of deterrence by the adversary that matters most. If at some point in the early 2040s Australia has all five of its Virginia-class boats within striking distance of Chinese targets, combined they will be able to launch – at most – 60 Tomahawk missiles. Australia may succeed in blowing up some Chinese missile launchers, cratering a runway or two, or even collapsing a few bridges or power plants, but this is a country with thousands of targets and plenty of physical redundancy. Psychologically, the Chinese people are strong: they endured the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution without cracking. For China, 60 missiles will barely be felt. These submarines may awe Australia’s leaders and national security commentators but they are not a credible deterrent against a power as large as China.
And though the missiles may not be felt, they will unfortunately be noticed. China will respond to Australia’s piffling attempt at deterrence with a larger number of missiles against our much smaller number of critical targets. We’ll feel it, alright.
In their glee to get these weapons, commentators seem to skate over the immensity of the nuclear submarine project’s cost. Admittedly, they are highly capable and powerful weapons, but $368 billion, even spread over decades, will reverberate through the Defence budget and beyond.
The government will either have to massively increase expenditure from the present
$48 billion (in this financial year), reduce expenditure on other projects or eliminate them entirely. The result will be that the ADF will remain a boutique force, but one now dominated by the nuclear-powered submarine niche, while the land and air forces will see reductions.
The acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines poses a risk to Australia’s sovereignty, too. The Virginia-class boats are a very complex work of engineering, which Australia has no experience in operating. The Royal Australian Navy will have to develop competencies that it does not currently possess, as well as find more sailors willing to serve under water. Australia has no nuclear industry to speak of and not much depth in its higher education system. There are no facilities in Australia to maintain a reactor or to deal with the waste. Albanese spoke of a host of skills that Australia will need to develop if this program is to succeed. The reality is that we will require a whole-ofnation commitment, lasting over decades, across numerous administrations, in a nation that undervalues higher education and research. Perhaps Australia can succeed in this endeavour, as it did with the Snowy Hydro scheme to generate hydroelectricity. But these submarines are the most complex and risky project that this nation has undertaken.
To succeed, Australia will need to rely on the US and Britain to assist in developing a usable and safe capability. Instead of increasing self-reliance, these ships will actually magnify dependence on Australia’s allies. For how long and to what extent is one of the program’s larger unknowns.
If this decision were to result in a larger allied submarine fleet, then the change in Defence policy and the taking of so many risks might be worthwhile. But it won’t. When Australia buys its three to five Virginias, it will simply reduce the US inventory. There is no fleet increase. It is simply a change-of-flag deal in which a highly experienced operator of nuclear submarines sells a part of its fleet to an L-plater. In other words, not only does the number of boats not increase but there is also likely to be a decline in skill, at least until Australia gains the decades of experience that the US possesses.
Perhaps more submarines will eventually result from this program, but this will require an expansion of yard capacity. Part of the project’s expense will go to updating Australia’s shipyard in Adelaide. Australia will also contribute $3 billion to improvements at US shipyards – again, increasing its commitment to the alliance.
While it is a relief finally to have some certainty on the path forward for the now-overdue replacement of the existing Collins-class submarines, the shift in
Defence policy undercuts the celebration. Unfortunately, Australia has made a very poor deal with its great power ally and has once again demonstrated that the framing of its Defence policy has little to do with national security and everything to do with burnishing Australia’s faithfulness to the US and the ANZUS alliance.
The submarine deal is more than just a function of Australia’s need to be seen to support the alliance, however. It is also because the US visualises security challenges only in military terms. Both the US and Australia are bypassing other levers of government power, such as trade and diplomacy, in the rush to solve a problem by force of arms alone. Until both governments broaden their definitions of national security strategy to include more than military affairs, this will no doubt continue.
Australia’s journey to nuclear-powered submarines will take a risk-filled route that will reshape our traditional Defence policy into one that increases alliance commitments yet offers less security. In this instance, the US has schooled Australia in the conduct of foreign policy – states advance their own interests, even at the expense of their friends. Well done, President Biden.