Hillsong leaders may at this point be somewhat unfazed by bad press—they would have to be, considering how willing they are to generate more of it.
After announcing the death of a church member who refused the covid vaccine and later died from the virus, Hillsong founder Brian Houston told CNN that he still considers vaccination a “personal decision” for other members of the congregation.
“On any medical issue, we strongly encourage those in our church to follow the guidance of their doctors,” Houston said in a statement, apparently while “emphasizing that the church’s focus was on spiritual well-being,” according to CNN. “While many of our staff, leadership and congregation have already received the Covid-19 vaccine, we recognize this is a personal decision for each individual to make with the counsel of medical professionals,” he said.
Houston has reportedly since deleted the original social media post where he eulogized the life of 34-year-old Stephen Harmon, who attended the global church’s Los Angeles location. Even after Harmon was hospitalized with the virus, he insisted he wasn’t “in a rush to get it.” (It was likely not an option for Harmon anyway; by the time patients are hospitalized it’s usually too late for them to get vaccinated.
“Stephen was just a young man in his early 30s,” Houston reportedly wrote. “He was one of the most generous people I know and he had so much in front of him. ... He will be missed by so many.”
It’s hardly surprising that Hillsong would toe the “personal decision” line on the vaccine. Hillsong—a church to which many Hollywood stars belong— traffics in a kind of New-Agey spirituality that inevitably overlaps with (or at least does not explicitly contradict) contemporary wellness culture. From there, it is often a short road to anti-vax sentiment, since wellness influencers often warn against putting things in one’s body that aren’t “natural.” Sadly the result is that Houston and other church leaders—though willing to get vaccinated themselves—are not willing to urge other members to do the same, even when they seem to know it can save their lives.
DISCUSSION
Hillsong is one of the worst exports we in Australia gave to the world. It isn’t a religion. It’s a cult. A full blown cult. Started by a paedophile and taken over by his son, who then blamed the victims of his father for leading his father astray and for somehow or other tempting him.. And who then tried to pay off the victims to keep them quiet while protecting and paying his father millions to live comfortably. They are the worst.
No one should be surprised that they advised people that it is fine to not get the vaccine. Because this is what they do. They preach about God and love and how God cures all, blah blah blah, but they are also selfish and evil in every sense of the word. I know this because I have had first hand experience..
Several members of my family are members and they went from being kind people to complete religious arseholes. When my father passed away last year of cancer, they came and sat with me in the hospital, supposedly to support me as I sat there waiting for my father’s heart to stop after horrific weeks of a prolonged dying process that was so bad that it borders on cruel that we allow people to endure it.. That so called support was them preaching at me and lecturing on my godless ways and then telling me that God was punishing me by making my dad suffer because I am an atheist. The fuckers even called their pastor while I sobbed by my dad’s hospital bed, not even able to hold his hands or touch him as by this point, the toxins were leeching out of his skin, and I was again told repeatedly that if I repented and believed, my dad would go immediately to “the kingdom of heaven” and that his pain would stop and they told me how selfish I was for not doing so, that I wanted my dad to suffer like this.. They completely broke me. The things they said to me still haunts me a year later and I am now in intensive therapy.. I have no contact with them now.. I will never forgive them for what they did.
They prey on the weak and try to convert by bringing people down so low that they become desperate. They were told by their church to do this to me and to try to get me convert and believe.. They probably see COVID as a recruitment opportunity.