The Institution, the Ethic, and the Affect: the Hillsong Church and The
The Institution, the Ethic, and the Affect: The Hillsong Church and the Production of Multiple Affinities of the Self Submitted in partial fulfilment of the degree of Bachelor of Arts & Commerce, with Honours in Sociology College of Arts & Social Sciences, Australian National University Matthew Wade 2010 1 Unless otherwise acknowledged in the text, this thesis represents the original research of the author: Signed:………………………… Matthew Wade 2 Acknowledgments I would like to express the greatest of thanks to my Honours supervisor, Dr Maria Hynes. Dr Hynes’ relentless positivity, gentle encouragement, and of course brilliant insight were absolutely invaluable. Warm thanks also go to Dr Rachel Bloul and Dr Joanna Sikora for their guidance, as well as my fellow classmates. Lastly, I give guarded thanks to the Hillsong Church, an institution that at once is endlessly fascinating, inspiring, and unnerving. 3 Abstract The Hillsong Church, based in Sydney, is the Australian exemplar of the ‘megachurch’ phenomena, characterised by large, generally non- denominational churches with evangelical, ‘seeker-friendly’ aspirations and adoption of contemporary worship methods. Given the increasingly large following the Church commands, there is surprisingly little scholarly research on Hillsong, particularly from the perspective of Sociology. This study seeks to contribute to a sociological understanding of the phenomenon of Hillsong by analysing the particular ways that its doctrine and practices evoke and respond to crises of the self in modernity. Hillsong does not rail against the developments associated with modernity, rather, the Church consciously evangelises in recognition of them, managing to both empower the individual and also act as a bulwark against more dehumanising elements of modern society.
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