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Your evening longread: The trouble at Hillsong, the celebrity megachurch

We bring you an interesting longread each evening to take your mind off the news.

EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.

And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle. 

We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.

Hillsong

The celebrity megachurch Hillsong has been at the centre of scandal after one of its pastors admitted to cheating on his wife. Now people have been speaking out about other controversies involving the church.

(Vanity Fair, approx 27 mins reading time)

“Since his days as a student at Hillsong College in the mid-2000s, Lentz had established himself as a golden child of the church with access to Houston’s tight inner circle. In casting Lentz out, Houston exiled not only the leading avatar of the culture he built, but something of a son as well. The effects of the split between the church’s founder and his most famous acolyte went far beyond the two men’s relationship. For years, Hillsong experienced rapid growth as it offered itself as a house of worship and community for its young followers seeking what they needed—be that healing, fellowship, or grace. Its contemporary spin on Christianity, embodied by Lentz, packed a thriving network of on-trend believers into services across the globe every week. But Lentz’s scandal and subsequent departure caused many of its congregants to reevaluate their relationship with the church.”

Read all the Evening Longreads here> 

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