Hillsong avoids the politicians

The Sydney Morning Herald/July 3, 2006
By Linda Morris

Today's opening of the annual convention of Sydney's largest evangelical congregation is to be a politician-free zone.

A rollcall of five federal ministers, eight Liberal backbenchers, two Nationals Senate leaders and the then NSW premier turned up to the high-energy religious gathering last year.

But amid disquiet about the political influence of the Christian right, the senior pastor of Hillsong Church, Brian Houston, has not renewed the invitations.

The office of the Treasurer, Peter Costello, a Hillsong regular who took to the stage in 2004 and 2005, confirmed he would not be there. Nor will the NSW Premier, Morris Iemma.

For its 20th anniversary conference, the church decided on Rick Warren, a best-selling Christian author and founding pastor of the Saddleback Church, one of the largest in the United States, to open the five-day conference.

But it will not stop politicians who are members of the church from attending in a private capacity, a spokeswoman for Hillsong said.

Hillsong, whose congregation in north-west Sydney has grown to almost 20,000 people, has been increasingly courted by politicians of all persuasions.

The church has come under intense parliamentary scrutiny, particularly from federal and NSW Labor for its use of federal grants for indigenous business start-ups and crime prevention.

Hillsong insists all its projects have been run successfully and with probity, but it lost a large federal grant amid the controversy.

Mr Houston said it was decided long ago that its conference would focus elsewhere.

The professor of sociology at Monash University, Gary Bouma, said Hillsong appeared to be treading more carefully in the ways it sought to influence society.

"I think both politicians and Hillsong have been a little burned by being too close together."