For the second day in a row, the Sydney Morning Herald is reporting on the seriously dodgy activities of “Mercy Ministries” as well as proving its links to both Hillsong and Gloria Jean’s coffee. According to This Article Various high-profile companies such as Rebel Sport and LG electronics have (rightly) withdrawn all financial and in-kind sponsorship arrangements with the cult-like organisation.
For those not up to speed on the story, Mercy Ministries is supposed to provide a residential program to help at-risk and recovering women. Instead of providing sound psychiatric and pyschological care, they bible-bash and perform exorcisms. They also ask inmates – among other atrocities – to sign over all their Centrelink payments to Mercy Ministries and deny them access to proper medical treatment. Tellingly, Gloria Jeans and Hillsong have both indicated that they have no intention of reviewing or withdrawing their financial support of the organisation. Full Article Here
This quote below comes from yet another article in which former participants in the group’s programs tell their stories:
“Their methods are harsh. You get separated from the entire non-Christian world: no TV, no newspapers and just three, 15-minute phone calls home a week.”
Melissa, who did not want her last name revealed, said she, too, began to harm herself in Mercy Ministries. Since she was kicked out in 2005, she has sought professional care for depression, bulimia and drug addiction.
“I went to another place, one that treated me like an adult and helped prepare me to cope in the real world,” she said.
(SMH 18/3/08).
Having spent 7 or 8 years of my life caught up in the Pentecostal movement, this issue is close to my heart. I can already imagine what the Hillsong preachers will be saying in church on Sunday: “This is an attack by the secular media on God’s work. The unsaved believe that medicine alone can treat mental illness and adiction. But we believe only God has power to truly set people free!! Hallelujah!!!” (congregation applauds and shouts Amen as the band strikes up with a couple of stirring chords).
Remember, these are the exact same people who told me repeatedly that “God can cure you of the ‘affliction and sin’ of Homosexuality”. Just in the 8 or 10 years since the time I subjected myself to 12 months of “ex-gay” therapy and counselling, all but the most dyed in the wool religious nutters have finally come to the conclusion that God tends not to work the kind of sexual-conversion miracles that these organisations claim. Most of the religious-quackery around the ex-gay movement’s methods for “curing” homosexuality has well and truly proven to be ineffective. Unfortunately, they’re still around and continue to inflict more pain on the lives of participants and those around them – especially the people who married someone of the opposite gender under the false pretense that marriage would sort out their “sexual confusion”. From my experience in the ex-gy movement, most participants are funnelled in from Pentecostal and evangelical churches, whereas nowadays, more and more the mainstream churches are welcoming queer members without the caveat of us being expected to try and “change”.
Yes, there are many good people who go to these Pentecostal churches. Many in congregations are able to look at the world they live in in a far more sophisticated and nuanced way than the black-and-white, us-and-them mentality held by much of the leadership. Some members are sceptical of the God wants you to be rich b.s. that rich leaders sprout to justify their own personal wealth. Meanwhile many of the members of their congregations come from places of serious financial, social and educational disadvantage. (Not a lot of University educated people can sustain the sort of intellectual contorsions and gymnastics required reconcile all the contradictions in what they teach and preach). Also it’s true that some of the churches do useful community and volunteer work – though more often than not, and more than most other church-based charity it’s acompanied by a the modern-day, me-generation equivalent of hellfire and brimstone. (i.e. Slightly schizophrenic God who is having trouble shaking his Old-Testament anger issues might get cranky with you unless you accept his bountiful promisses of wealth and “healing”).
No doubt the Mercy Ministries debate will continue; and so it should. Their conection to Hillsong and the Assemblies of God needs to be brought to mainstream attention – particularly as those groups are trying to take a greater hold of the direction of policy and politics in Australia in the same way that the religious right have strangled America’s leadership and direction – and look how much good it’s done for the yanks!
