‘An Unstoppable Force for Good’?: How Neoliberal Governance Facilitated the Growth of Australian Suburban-Based Pentecostal Megachurches

Hillsong Church has received significant scholarly attention, which has observed the church’s rapid local and global growth. Several other Australian-based Pentecostal churches demonstrate a similar growth trajectory to Hillsong Church, namely: C3 Church, Citipointe Church, Planetshakers, and Influencers Church. To further scholarly understanding of aspects of this rapid growth, this paper discusses the emergence of economic rationalist policies which led to the neoliberal governance context in Australia. The paper argues that the emergence of this policy context, which emphasises marketization and privatisation, provided opportunities for suburban-based Pentecostal churches to expand activities beyond conducting worship services. The paper analyses materials produced by Hillsong Church, C3 Church, Citipointe Church, Planetshakers, and Influencers Church and associated educational, charity, and financial organisations. Through this analysis, the paper finds that the emergence of a neoliberal governance context in Australia provided opportunities for these churches to expand activities beyond traditional worship ceremonies to include additional activities such as running schools, Bible colleges, community care organisations, charity ventures, and financial institutions. The paper shows how economic rationalism and neoliberalism assisted in providing a context within which Australian-based suburban Pentecostal churches were able to take opportunities to grow aspects of church organisation, which helped to develop a global megachurch status. In this way, these churches took up opportunities that changes in political circumstances in Australia provided, developing a theology of growth actualised in expanding church-branded activities around the globe.

Review of Frederick Gaiser’s book, Healing in the Bible

Frederick Gaiser’s book Healing in the Bible is very instructive when read from an ‘ordinary reader’ perspective. The reviewer especially commends Gaiser on his ‘hermeneutic of appreciation’ and his maintaining of biblical scholarship without succumbing to western enlightenment presuppositions and thereby undermining the biblical worldview. The reviewer also welcomes the post-modern structure of the book which relies on healing narratives and case studies. However, the need for a more in-depth discussion of the author’s theological methods and the lack of a unifying thesis are possible weaknesses. The reviewer explores the various themes in the book through an African indigenous and Pentecostal lens. The reviewer specifically addresses beliefs regarding healing, sickness, exorcism and the demonic, healing and curing, and healing and symbolism. Ultimately, this book is highly recommended not only for seminaries, Bible colleges, and churches in the Global North, but especially those in the Global South.

Slithering Down the Plank of Intellectualism? The Canadian Conference of Christian Educators and the Impulse towards Accreditation among Canadian Bible Schools during the 1960s

The scholarly analysis of accreditation among Bible schools and colleges remains a significant historiographical lacuna. This article examines the emerging impulse towards accreditation within the Bible school movement in western Canada during the turbulent 1960s, a critical decade in the development of evangelical theological education in Canada. The central focus is the origin, activities, and influence of a conference known as the Canadian Conference of Christian Educators (CCCE), an annual gathering of evangelical educators that began meeting in 1960. The prominent presence of personnel from the newly formed Accrediting Association of Bible Colleges (AABC), who were keenly interested in extending their organization into a region with the largest concentration of Bible schools in the world, raised expectations among Canadian evangelical educators about the possibility of a new level of respectability and recognition for their schools among public universities in Canada. Bible college educators in Canada soon discovered that AABC accreditation did not mean the same thing within the post-secondary educational landscape of Canada as it did in the United States. This resulted in an ambivalent relationship between AABC and the emerging Bible colleges in Canada, and prompted some Canadian leaders to investigate other avenues towards academic recognition. Illustrating the polarized response towards accreditation within the Bible school/college movement are two brief institutional studies of Mennonite Brethren Bible College in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and Prairie Bible Institute in Three Hills, Alberta. The differences reflect the variegated character of an evolving evangelicalism in western Canada. By the end of the 1960s, the significant American influence within the CCCE had been displaced by Canadian initiative and leadership, thus signalling the beginning of a new chapter in evangelical higher education in Canada.