The Pentecostal faithful are flocking to sermons by pastors in ripped jeans and tearing up at rock concerts. It’s a far cry from empty pews in many Anglican and Catholic churches.
he smoke machines are in full flight as hundreds of bodies bathed in coloured lights sway in unison to the music inside the vast, dark auditorium.
“We are in God’s house today,” shouts the band’s lead singer, a lithe figure in skinny jeans, gliding across the stage. The congregation roars. The number of Australians identifying as Catholic has fallen from 23 to 20 per cent in five years, while Anglicans dropped from 13 to 10 per cent. About 44 per cent of Australians now identify as Christian, down from 52 per cent five years earlier and 61 per cent in 2011.data shows there were 237,986 Pentecostals in Australia in 2011; by 2021 that figure had soared to 414,882. More than 54,400 Pentecostal Christians now live in Victoria, an increase of 17 per cent since 2011.
“The speaking in tongues is done behind closed doors before the band gets on stage to perform,” says Rocha, who has studied Pentecostalism and written a book on the Hillsong Church.On two television screens hanging in the auditorium, a young woman’s face suddenly beams out. She tells a story about back pain that had left her bedridden.
By 16, Jakwot had fallen in with the wrong crowd and began dabbling in drugs, alcohol and crime, when sensationalist reporting in Australia was targeting South Sudanese youth. He was caught stealing at a shopping centre and arrested. He vividly remembers his mother arriving at the police station in tears.
In its heyday, an estimated 50 million people around the world sang Hillsong songs each week, and it raked in more than $100 million in income each year. Chantal Morrill is used to getting strange looks from people when she tells them she is a Pentecostal Christian. young people, particularly women, are leaving Pentecostalism in droves due to issues such as gender inequality, or the movement’s more conservative views on abortion, gender and sexuality.including ones in Melbourne
Rather than a megachurch, the L’Almonts want to create a Pentecostal church like a suburban parish of yesteryear.As Pentecostalism booms globally, Melbourne priest Father Kevin Dillon says the Catholic Church in the Western world is in the grips of an existential crisis. “It is in what I call a deep freeze. It is in denial,” the 78-year-old says.He says a more secular society was perhaps inevitable.
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