Should We Keep Singing Hillsong?

When the megachurch’s former pastors are in the news with allegations of scandal and abuse, what a contentious name it is.

When a megachurch scandal makes headlines, it doesn’t usually affect your Sunday morning set list. But Hillsong isn’t just a megachurch. It’s a major global force in worship music.

Since the explosion of the song “Shout to the Lord” in 1994, Sydney-based Hillsong has shaped worship in the US, particularly among Pentecostals and evangelicals. The pop and rock sounds of Hillsong United and Hillsong Young and Free reach Americans through the pews on Sunday, radio and streaming, and arena concert tours.

Currently, four of the ten most popular worship songs sung in churches have come out of Hillsong (“The Goodness of God,” “What a Beautiful Name,” “Who You Say I Am,” and “King Of Kings”).

But as successive headlines chronicle revelations of moral failings among Hillsong leadership, accusations of abuse, toxic internal structures, pastors stepping down, and congregations leaving the denomination, some worship leaders are questioning whether the musical fruit of such a ministry belongs in their own churches.

Recently, the situation at Hillsong was featured in Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed, a Discovery+ docuseries hooked to the 2020 termination of Hillsong New York pastor Carl Lentz, who admitted to infidelity in his marriage.

“At first, it’s like, ‘There is no way this is happening’ … but then it goes to anger,” said Katie Thrush, a longtime Hillsong fan, a worship leader, and a survivor of abuse. Following the stories out of Hillsong, she said, felt like going through the stages of grief.

Now, she’s conflicted about whether to keep singing favorites like “What a Beautiful Name.” “I really love that ...

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Apocalypse Now: How the Left and Right Get Danger Wrong

Alarmist thinking is toxic in politics and at odds with Christian hope.

The idea of an apocalypse is terrifying for a people and culture under the pretension that everything is under our control—and that our best hope is to continue to feel in control.

In politics today, apocalyptic thinking on the right and the left is based on an apocalypse that is sure to harm us—but is not so unwieldy that our total control could not avert it. Meanwhile, the Christian idea is nearly the opposite: Embracing apocalypse would not only prepare us for the reality of the world to come, but it involves an acceptance of the world as it is and our role in it.

Political imaginings of apocalypse are of events that we might prevent if only everyone else would get on board. In this way, the apocalypse is not so much focused on the event itself, but on other people’s stubbornness. We are condemned not necessarily by God or by our own deeds and thoughts, but by our neighbors’ degraded political views. Because of this, the apocalyptic thinking dominating our politics is anti-humanistic since it depends on broad, explicit, and implicit condemnation of our fellow human beings—and ultimately, of our own existence.

One version of apocalyptic thinking on the right is lamenting the ever-encroaching immorality of others and “the culture” in general. We are at risk of losing America as we know it—that is, our communities have transformed such that they are “unrecognizable” and constantly on the verge of irretrievability. It’s the language of carnage and nostalgia.

On the right, the moral dualism of apocalyptic thinking moves from character and values outward to actions. We are doomed because evil people act in such a way that makes our way of life inhospitable.

For a ...

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Church of Scotland Ready to Approve Same-Sex Marriage

Traditionalist minority worry disagreement on the issue will make it harder to work together on mission.

The Church of Scotland—the largest Protestant church in the country—is another step closer to allowing its ministers to officiate same-sex weddings.

The majority of the denomination endorsed draft legislation to let clergy marry same-sex couples, with 29 presbyteries in favor and 12 opposed. The proposal will go before its General Assembly gathering in Edinburgh in May for approval.

While clergy will not be required to marry same-sex couples, the move makes the minority who oppose the national church ’s involvement in gay marriage worried about further division.

"There’s still a continued struggle within the Church of Scotland,” Mike Goss, a minister in the presbytery of Angus who opposed the change, told Premier Christian News. “The group of folk are called traditionalists, folk who stand by the Bible, we’re not going away. We’re still there.”

The traditionalist wing of the church have debated its response to the moves toward affirming same-sex marriage for years. Even as the Presbyterian church prepares to allow the practice, the denomination’s official stance recognizes the tension.

“The Church recognises that there are diverse views on the subject of same-sex marriage,” it says. “We are committed to ensuring that debates on this subject are held in a spirit of humility and grace, that the tone and tenor of discussions are civil and people are respectful of those who hold opposing views.”

Scotland legalized civil partnerships for same-sex couples in 2005 and marriage in 2014. The Church of Scotland—also known by its Scottish name, Kirk—endorsed clergy in same-sex relationships back in 2009 but so far has not allowed ceremonies ...

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Sunday School Paused During the Pandemic. Will It Come Back?

A new report shows dramatic disruptions to religious education classes as fewer attend or volunteer.

When Tracey Fixen volunteered to serve as the Sunday school superintendent for her church, she had a clean slate. There had been no religious education programing at Our Savior’s Lutheran in Colefax, North Dakota.

“I started saying, ‘We’re going to watch videos so we have some sort of adult education,’” she said. The 200-person church now offers lessons during a coffee hour prior to the Sunday service each week.

Many of the materials they have are “outdated,” Fixen said—it’s not in the budget to invest in new ones right now—but putting on some kind of Sunday school is more than a lot of churches are doing.

As US church attendance remains stagnant and congregations move toward a focus on Bible studies or small groups, religious education classes on Wednesday nights or Sunday mornings have largely fallen away.

Plus, those extra gatherings were put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. Will they ever come back?

New data from the Hartford Institute for Religion Research shows that half of churches surveyed report that their religious education programs were majorly disrupted in the past two years, though evangelical churches weren’t as affected as mainline, Catholic, and Orthodox congregations.

The majority of churches had fewer religious education offerings in 2021, while a quarter recouped some of those losses by March of this year.

Among the surveyed congregations, “a few consolidated classrooms and combined age groups, while some did away with their Sunday classes and moved them to weeknights for the whole family,” the researchers wrote. “For some churches, these decisions may have been a conscious choice, but for others, they may have been ...

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How Black Holes Radiate God’s Glory

Q&A with Reasons to Believe astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink on collapsing stars, quantum gravity, why physics isn’t finished, and what that tells us about our creator.

There has been a burst of research on black holes in recent days. Three scholars from Norway, Brazil, and Canada say they’ve found the “smoking gun for the quantum structure of black hole horizons” in gravitational wave echoes. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory reports evidence black holes are devouring thousands of stars. And two more scholars from the United Kingdom and the United States have proposed that “quantum hair” can resolve the black hole paradox first described by theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

According to Reasons to Believe astrophysicist Jeff Zweerink, the new research raises new questions, showing us that “the more we learn, the more we realize how much more there is to learn.” CT asked him why physics isn’t finished and what that can teach Christians who, like the psalmist, “consider your heavens, the work of your fingers” (Ps. 8:3).

What do black holes tell us about God?

It’s not like, “Black holes, therefore God.” But the theory of the universe that we have—the theory that said black holes should exist before anyone knew to even think about them—is predicated on the idea that our universe ought to be understandable. It ought to be coherent. It ought to be the same out in the distant reaches of the universe as it is here.

That points to the Creator. That tells us something about the Creator.

Look at how we get to black holes in the first place. Albert Einstein, back in 1915, recognized that as you move through the universe, from big stuff to small stuff and very fast stuff to very slow stuff, the laws of physics seemed to change. The way electromagnetism behaved was different from the way gravity behaved, and ...

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Biblical Exile Is Not About Losing Cultural Influence

Christians throughout the ages face exile—but not in the way we often think of it.

This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.

A week or so ago, Christianity Today published an essay by Canadian pastor Jacob Birch, arguing that “No, Western Christians Are Not in Exile.”

Birch is exactly right that exile language can betray some of the worst impulses of Western evangelicalism. But at the same time, I believe the language of exile is exactly what the Bible offers us to combat all that.

Birch starts by noting that many white evangelical churches today are accustomed to hearing themselves described as exiles, mostly in light of shifts toward secularization and the marginalization of Christianity. No doubt that is true in certain areas of the country and continent (including his Canadian context).

But alas, in my own Bible Belt context, the idea of “exile” seems absent altogether. Instead, ironically enough, I’ve found the metaphor Birch proposes—that of “occupation”—tends to be the governing analogy, even if not articulated in those words.

Occupation, after all, implies a hostile force has invaded one’s own territory, holding a people hostage in their own land. This is, at several points, a reality in the biblical story of the people of God. It is why, for instance, the religious leaders’ question to Jesus about whether to pay taxes to Caesar was so charged.

According to the mindset of many first-century Jews, saying yes to that question would be to affirm Rome’s occupation of their land—which they believed should rightly be governed not by a puppet government under Caesar but by the house of David. Jesus looked past this temporal occupation toward a deeper, more primal one—that of overtaking the ...

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Global Methodist Church Launches, Though African Leaders Wait to Join

While departing US congregations begin the process of joining the new, leader denomination, many conservatives in Africa are holding out for the much-delayed 2024 conference vote.

Methodist congregations that know their future is not in the United Methodist Church (UMC) officially have a new place to land: the Global Methodist Church (GMC).

Launching on May 1, the new denomination plans to uphold traditional, conservative Wesleyan theology but run on a lighter, leaner infrastructure that emphasizes grassroots accountability and ministry connections.

After years of delays, with the next opportunity to vote on a proposal to split scheduled for 2024, some UMC congregations in the US are starting the disaffiliation process and plan to join the GMC as soon as they can. And though many leaders in Africa—where Methodism is growing rapidly—align with the movement’s conservative stances on LGBT issues, they’re more inclined to wait.

At least one regional body, in Europe, has already decided to switch all its congregations over to the Global Methodist Church; in the US, the denomination’s top court has yet to rule on whether regional bodies can disaffiliate together under current church law.

For now, US churches are opting to join the GMC one by one. Mosaic Church in Evans, Georgia, plans to join the new Methodist denomination, but the process to leave the UMC will take months.

From the pews, not much will change. Mosaic’s name and logo will remain the same, as will the format for Sunday worship. Lead pastor Carolyn Moore will continue emphasizing Wesleyan theology in her sermons, and the church will continue its work partnering with ministries that help the people who, in Moore’s view, tend to “fall through the cracks” of other churches. Even the pension plans for Moore and other staff members will still go through Wespath Benefits and Investments, the organization ...

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Opposing Porn Isn’t as Lonely as It Once Was for UK Evangelicals

New efforts to protect children win secular allies.

Ask Ian Henderson what he does for a living, and he has to decide whether to respond with the quick version—that he runs a charity—or the potentially awkward version—that he works in pornography education and recovery.

“Sometimes it’ll really open a conversation,” said Henderson, the CEO of Visible Ministries and the Naked Truth Project, which helps over 10,000 people a year in the United Kingdom through training, support groups, and counseling.

Facing a porn epidemic can feel like being dropped into the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37, Henderson said, up close with filth and pain while God shows him “how bad things have gotten.” As pornography has proliferated online, however, more of his fellow Brits are open to talking about its dark side too.

For ministries such as Naked Truth and Christian advocacy groups such as CARE (Christian Action Research and Education), opposing pornography is no longer the lonely position it was for British evangelicals back in the 1970s and 1980s, when they were maligned as prudish killjoys.

Now, websites face legal challenges for hosting abusive content; research is revealing more about how porn affects the mind; and parents of faith and no faith share concerns about kids’ early exposure to sexual material online.

“For a while, there’s been a clear divide of [pornography] being unacceptable in Christian circles and socially acceptable if you’re not a Christian,” said Hannah Lodge, an administrator at Naked Truth. “I think that gap is closing.”

When pastor Ioannis Dekas learned that his teenage son had searched for porn on a school device last year, “It was a wake-up call,” he said. “I had ...

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