Before the Hot Priest in the BBC comedy series Fleabag, there was Carl Lentz. For a time, the young, tattooed “hype priest” was the face of global megachurch Hillsong, preaching a cool brand of Christianity to sports stars and celebrities like Justin Bieber.
“Carl was incredibly charismatic, an amazing speaker and able to put the Bible into relevant, almost mundane terms,” explains filmmaker Stacey Lee. “He was funny, he was vulnerable, he just gave so much of himself. He became his own celebrity.”
But to paraphrase John Milton, Lentz fell like a shooting star when an extramarital affair was exposed and he was fired from Hillsong. His breaking his silence in a candid, lengthy interview with Lee made headlines this week.
But Lee’s four-part documentary series The Secrets of Hillsong, based on original reports by Vanity Fair journalists Alex French and Dan Adler, is about more than one tumultuous priest. The Lentz scandal was just the first layer in a series of allegations of child molestation, sexual assault, racial discrimination and labor exploitation that left Hillsong’s reputation in tatters.
It centers on Brian Houston, a New Zealand-born pastor and evangelist who prayed for Donald Trump during a visit to the White House, the culmination of a journey that began in a small church in Sydney in 1983. When Houston founded Hillsong with his wife Bobbie, he shook up traditional forms of worship with vibrant worship services and creative sermons.
In the 1990s, Hillsong Music, the church’s music ministry, began producing and releasing worship albums such as “Shout to the Lord” and “The Power of Your Love,” which found widespread acceptance in churches around the world and fueled the growth of the brand driven. Hillsong expanded its reach by establishing locations and affiliated churches abroad, beginning in London in 1992.
The turning point for his ambitions in America came in 2010. On October 6 of the same year, the Instagram social network service for sharing photos and videos was born. HillsongNYC opened in New York on October 17th. They were a perfect fit for each other and for millennials.
Lee, who was born in New Zealand and is in her mid-30s, explains, “This was a church that was perfect for Instagram fodder: a pastor.” [Lentz] hangs out with Justin Bieber in a leather jacket; Churches in a nightclub. Each week there is a plethora of Instagram-worthy moments to document. You can see how the Church managed to build a very public image and infiltrate the world of pop culture.”
Hillsong’s style of mass gatherings, slick online reach, and Grammy-winning Christian rock music spread to Los Angeles, Paris, Moscow, Cape Town, Buenos Aires, and other cities. More than 100,000 people attended weekly Hillsong services in about 20 countries, including over 10,000 at multiple locations across the United States.
Despite all the energy and enterprise, Hillsong’s theology, financial practices, and governance structure were subject to scrutiny and controversy. Rapacious growth had become an end in itself.
Speaking via Zoom from Joshua Tree, Calif., Lee says, “The mission was so unclear that the original goals of the church were kind of lost. The goal of this church from the beginning has been to reach as many people as possible, and as our historian of religion says in the documentary, in their desire to grow, they never considered whether they should.
“The whole point of the church is to protect the people within it, but what happened at Hillsong is an about-face: let’s just keep getting more and more instead of caring for the people we already have within our own walls.” have.” In the end, it turned out that this model, which had been reproduced in all countries for decades, was not the best model after all.”
Lentz, from Hillsong, New York, was a charismatic, larger-than-life figure. He shared how he baptized Bieber in basketball veteran Tyson Chandler’s New York bathtub in the middle of the night (Bieber has since denounced the church). His marriage to Laura, a fellow pastor he met while they were studying at Hillsong’s Training College in Sydney, was part of the mythology.
Justin Bieber and Carl Lentz in 2017. Photo: Shareif Ziyadat/Getty ImagesLee muses, “Laura isn’t just his wife. She was a royal member of Hillsong long before Carl came along. She was the epicenter of that church and the origins of that church, so ultimately there’s a double betrayal happening here: it’s not just her husband in this insanely public way, it’s the church as well.”
Lentz had an extramarital affair with Ranin Karim, a designer in New York. In 2020, he admitted on Instagram that he cheated on Laura, which resulted in both of them being quickly kicked out. “She lost everything at the same moment as her husband. Again, that role of a church, a place of safety, sanctuary, support in your worst moments, and that church wasn’t there in that moment.
“We couldn’t just go straight to the systemic issues. You also have to build up their story to understand how deep that connection to origin was and how brutal the excommunication might have been.”
The affair and marital strife are detailed in the second episode of Secrets of Hillsong in Lentz and Laura’s first major interviews since leaving the megachurch.
Lentz prays aloud on camera, describing how Hillsong’s rapid growth led to him taking excessive medication and admitting that by the end he was unable to take the lead. He also reveals that he had another affair with the couple’s nanny, who was also a member of the Church.
He says: “I have done these things. They’re on me. I take responsibility for this and will make amends where I can for the rest of my life.”
Despite everything, the Lentzes are still together and live in Sarasota, Florida, where he now works in advertising. Her openness was the result of months of patient trust-building by Lee.
“You can feel that and the seriousness with which Carl is sitting at the end of the first episode. How should I start? I try to see the human side of every subject. I wanted to be able to develop the conversation further: Why do pastors keep falling? This isn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last. But why does this keep happening?
“What is it about his life and the position he holds that he couldn’t walk up to someone and say, ‘Hey, I’m no longer qualified for this, I’m resigning?'” There weren’t any people there. For him, there were no structures or systems of accountability.
“There was no support for marriage around them, and that’s not an excuse, it’s just the structure of the church.” So what happens when something goes wrong? Who do you contact? Who is the pastor?”
People pray during a service at Hillsong Church in New York. Photo: Andrés Kudacki/APShe adds: “I haven’t seen many of these conversations. It was about understanding the systematic mechanics within Hillsong and what happened to leadership when other problems arose.
“What we do know, as the documentary puts it, is this system of controlling the narrative, covering up where you have to cover it up, cutting someone off over here and being able to ultimately protect the church rather than the church’s parishioners to protect.” “
The Secrets of Hillsong gives a voice to survivors and victims. For all its modernity, the church’s attitude toward women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community has been extremely traditional. Top positions were dominated by white men. Five female parishioners in New York wrote a letter in 2017 alleging inappropriate sexual behavior between employees and interns; all five have since left.
In 2015, a Royal Commission on Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that Houston had failed to notify police about allegations that his father Frank had sexually abused children. Houston has pleaded not guilty to concealing the crime until his father’s death in 2004. The case remains in court, with hearings set to resume next month.
The documentary also investigates allegations that Houston himself made sexually suggestive remarks towards a woman at a 2019 conference. He claims the incident was the result of accidentally mixing alcohol and anti-anxiety medication.
Before stepping down as Hillsong boss last year, Houston had enjoyed political cover for much of his career. He was very proud to visit Trump – a US President who, despite his own unbiblical behavior, was desperate to win the support of Christian evangelicals – in 2019, as he told his supporters that he was in the Cabinet Room and “just had the opportunity.” to pray for the President”. Trump card”.
Lee comments, “Hillsong is from Australia, so it’s very intertwined there, but what we experienced at the end of Brian’s reign was that if you want to make it big on a global scale, you have to make it big on the political.” America’s and he was certainly making progress at that point.”
She adds, “What we see in modern religion is not just an institution existing in its own silo, but involved in many things.” The Moral Majority and Everything Else: The history of the entanglement of religion and politics is enough far behind, even if there are laws that are supposed to protect against it.
“What was so shocking about Hillsong’s roots lies not only in the political system, but also in the judicial system. Why are child sexual abuse victims’ accounts not heard? These are violent crimes against children. Where are all? That’s the part we’re trying to unravel. It’s not just the power structures within celebrity, but where does it get more dangerous? Where does it become more problematic?”