March 2, 2023 • 33 mins
Warning: This episode contains descriptions of homophobia and mental distress.
Noemi’s personal story unfolds. Remember Hillsong’s ‘Welcome Home - You Belong’ message? Noemi thought that meant everyone. But it turned out “terms and conditions applied”. Hillsong Boston where Noemi was worshipping felt cool, it felt liberal and it seemed to be inclusive. Noemi was finding their/her sexual identity. And finally it was time to share that queer identity with family and church. But Noemi doesn’t get affirmation and struggles to get answers from Hillsong. Does the church welcome gay people? The answers emerge slowly and painfully. And Noemi looks back through Hillsong’s history and discovers pain from the past is still causing trauma today.
False Profits: Hillsong is produced by Storyglass for iHeartRadio
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is false prophets. The story of Hillsong, the Hipster's church.
It made millions of dollars, turned preachers into stars, but
fell to earth. I left Hillsong feeling spiritually abused and exploited,
and now I'm telling my story of life inside the megachurch.
(00:23):
I'm no Ami Uribe, and I'm proud to say I'm queer.
This episode is deeply personal. It's about my sexual identity
and rejection that might resonate with you, and I know
that could be triggering for some of you. The stories
you are going to hear are intense, with some moments
of distress, but also moments of joy. In twenty seventeen,
(00:49):
the year when I first walked into Hillsong Church, I
saw the huge welcome home sign. I thought welcome home
meant everyone. Later on I learned that welcome home had
terms and conditions at the bottom. That we're invisible, but
you kind of learn as you go. I'm mosta, how
(01:13):
are you? I'm good. This is my mom, Lorenza. She
was born in Mexico and lives in Arizona. We talked
most days, so I've had a bit of a bicultural
That's what I like to call it bicultural experience in
two countries where I can speak in Spanish and I
(01:33):
don't have an accent because I learned it so young,
and I don't have much of an accent in English either.
My parents told us that inside our home it was
Mexico we needed to speak Spanish, and as soon as
we stepped outside the door, it was the US and
we had to speak English. My mom's church preached that
homosexuality is a sin. I grew up in that kind
(01:56):
of church, and I walked away. When I moved to Boston,
I found Hillsong and I started to explore my sexual identity. Finally,
it was time to have a conversation with my mom,
so I ended up calling my mom after work. I
was laying on my bed and my room was really dark.
I wanted the safety of darkness. I don't know why
(02:18):
I felt safe in that. And I dial the phone
and I call my mom. I say I need to
tell you something, and she stays really quiet, and she
asked me, yeah, like what's happening, what's going on? And
I tell her I'm queer. I don't know what this
means for religion. I don't know what this means for
my life. But I need you to know that this
(02:41):
is who I am, and I'm letting you in a
little bit more into who I am as a person.
I'm figuring things out, and I know you're going to
have a lot of questions coming from her perspective as
a person who had been in the church I grew
up in. She immediately to You're going to hell, and
(03:02):
she started crying and had so much fear in her
in her voice, because that's all I could hear. I
could see, I could hear and feel that fear that
she had that I was not going to be in
heaven with her and she was losing me. And she
started bible thomping, which was what often we use when
(03:23):
someone is just throwing scripture at you and like hurting
you with a Bible as if they were banging the
Bible on your body. And so I had to go
back in my mind to the sessions and therapy where
I had talked to my therapist that if this happened,
I needed to set a boundary. I stopped her and
I said, Mom, I cannot do this right now. If
(03:45):
you're going to continue not allowing me to speak, if
you're going to continue to be hurtful with your words.
I need to step away. So I said, I'm going
to hang up the phone and I will leave it
at that, and I did. If you've been through this,
you need to know that you have good friends. You
need to know you are loved. You need to be affirmed.
(04:09):
Step by step, I started to find out if Hillsong
was going to affirm me. First, I talked to my leader.
I vividly remember she was folding her clothes, her laundry,
and she asked me, so, what happened last night? And
I was like, seriously, Like I had said, I didn't
(04:29):
want to talk about this, and she says, well, why
did you feel the need to come out to your mom?
And I tell her because it's a big part of
who I am, and I wanted to no longer be
hiding this from her. I want to be openly me,
all of me. And she tells me, well, what is identity?
(04:51):
Is an identity so elusive? And I say, what, Like,
identity is a big part of who we are where
there's so many little things that make up our identity.
But I start telling her all of these identities. I'm
Latin X, I am a student. I am a Christian
(05:11):
at that time, and all of these things are coming up,
and I was like, this is who what makes who
I am? And being queer is right now a big
part of that identity. And she says, well, shouldn't our
identity in Christ be so much bigger than all of that?
Shouldn't you be identifying as a child of God first?
(05:34):
And I tell her, well, one thing isn't before the other.
It's just a whole combilation of who you are. It's
like a big circle. And that was really really eye
opening for me and for our friendship. And I realized
in that moment that I was not going to have
save conversations with her about this. It went from experiencing
(05:56):
friendship and everything so beautifully to having to hide this
big part of me and not be able to show that,
of fanning the door like it's beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Andrew and Anthony arriving at a hot studio in Sydney.
To be honest, if you had asked me to wake
(06:17):
up a seven am, I would have politely said nine.
They're linking up with us to talk about sex, identity
and God. Yeah. Andrew found Jesus at Hillsong when he
was thirteen years old. He's now thirty seven. Anthony is
a former Pentecostal preacher. He's seventy one. I'm twenty seven now.
(06:39):
So between us we have more than five decades of
the bizarre and painful things religion can throw at us.
LGBTQ people. Oh, three of us like to laugh at stuff,
but some of it has been really, really bad, and
we are all healing. Here's Andrew. I would say that
we are an ongoing work in progress. I think the
(07:02):
human experience is one of navigation and exploration, not setting
and forgetting. And so I would say that even with
these very challenging experiences, that sometimes it does take time
and not to judge that. And so one of the
things that I often think about and have been invited
(07:23):
to think about in the last several months, is honoring
the fact that my experience at Hillsong Church has been
an experience of complex trauma and complex PTSD. This for
me is a powerful remembering, a powerful telling of my
story that I think is really important to my healing
(07:47):
and really important to the next several decades that I
have here on this planet. Andrew wrote an amazing heartbreaking
blog about his experience. He's going to read some of it.
We start in the summer of nineteen ninety seven, the
summer Andrew discovered Hillsong. Wow. What an intoxicating mix of fellowship, community, love,
(08:12):
acceptance and best of all, great music. I finally had
an identity and an identity in Christ. I had instant friends,
I had a community. I also had two goals. Number
one be more like Jesus and number two sing in
(08:34):
that bloody band. I didn't have criteria, you know, the
criteria of a thirteen year old walking into a church.
I needed just love. And Hillsong at that time was
exciting and expansive. We were recording albums and you know,
new convention centers and the Prime Minister opening a building
(08:57):
in Norwest of Sydney. You know, music pumping, and lives changed,
meaning created. It was everything. I embraced every single aspect
of Hillsong Church. I was thriving in my new found faith, well,
at least thriving on the outside, hidden behind closed doors.
(09:22):
I had a really big conflict and at the time
I definitely did not have the resources to handle it.
It turned out I had quite a strong passion for
looking at naked men, a passion I could not shake
very easily. This secret would stay with me for many
years and actually come to haunt my every day. When
(09:46):
I was twenty years old, it came time to tell
Hillsong leadership about my big, dark and scary secret. My
world instantly collapsed. Leadership asked me to leave the worship team.
I was asked not to tell anyone, and as a result,
I became incredibly isolated in my sin. I sobbed most
(10:08):
of these days. I felt numb. I feared that this
sense of evilness and isolation would never ever end. My
friends of ten years plus were not able to offer
support or love because they were kept totally in the dark.
I was encouraged to exercise to enhance my masculinity. We
(10:31):
prayed the demons off my back, and I was sent
to an outside minister for counseling who had a specialization
in homosexuality and more earth shatteringly for me, child sex offenders.
I felt evil beyond words. I felt demons crawling all
(10:52):
over my body, and the depths of despair cannot be
described here. The identity I had rated within God's eyes
had vanished overnight. It is hard to say how one
survives these earth shattering moments, but most of us do.
Andrew decided to tell a close circle of friends and
(11:14):
leaders at Hillsong that he was going to live as
a gay man. He sent an email explaining his decision
and telling them he was leaving the church. Andrew said
I love you and asked for their love and return.
What happened after that is everyone abandoned the situation and
(11:38):
refused to engage, except for this email that I got
from the most senior pastor that I was sort of
being handled by at the church. So I sent that email.
Let me just give you the date. I sent that
in June twenty five, and I received this email back
(11:59):
from Hillsong. This is from an at Hillsong dot com address.
Hey Bro. Sorry, that's really funny. Can you believe he
wrote hey bro like it's actually written there? Oh my
fucking god, Hey Bro, I had a good read through
your email. I am a bit surprised, but not shocked.
(12:21):
I am going to have a shot at looking through
the eyes of the spirit to see if I can't
shed some light on your thinking. It's a long email
with references to lust of the flesh and advice to
Andrew that he should listen to his inner man. It
rounds off with this, even though you have thought this through,
(12:42):
it is possible that you have been influenced by the
enemy and his tactics. So I think it would be
good to talk this over and make sure that you
are not deceived or influenced by the spirit of the world,
which is very pro towards this type of lifestyle. See
what you think, still here to help out. I ignored
(13:04):
that email back in the day. Doesn't even hurt to read,
because it's just mad Hillsong speak. Mad hearing Andrew's story
is not shocking to me. Sad, yes, but not surprising.
The level of intensity is greater than mine, and the
(13:26):
counseling he was referred to costs so much pain. But
I do identify with what he suffered, and I admire
his courage. I look back at my twenty year old self,
the brave one who, even in that intoxication of Hillsong,
backed himself to leave. And you know, I sit here
(13:48):
feeling quite powerful that at twenty and twenty one, I
was able to make those moves and step out and
create the life that I get to live now. As
a thirty seven year old. It makes me think of
the things that I would like an apology for, potentially
if it was possible, But I just don't think it
(14:08):
is possible, which is, you know, the silence and the
shaming when I disclosed my same sex attraction to leadership
and the leadership response and being sent to an outside counselor,
and that really really fucking with my mind. You know
(14:31):
what I would love I want people to recognize that
these sorts of decisions made out of faith and what
they would describe as love or God's plan and their
lasting pain, hurt and harm that is caused by those
types of decisions. I would love for them to be
(14:54):
able to see it, connect to it. That's what I
would like them to know. I am Anthony Van Brown,
and in the form of lit I thought I was
a high profile Pentecostal preacher. I am the founder and
CEO of Ambassadors at Bridge build As International Abbey as
(15:15):
we call it, and author of the best seller A
Lot of That Learning a preachers struggle with his homosexuality
Church at Faith. Anthony is a really big part of
Andrew's story. When Andrew first read Anthony's life story, he says,
it was like every cell in my body was being noticed.
(15:36):
Anthony stories extreme, but in a way it is all
our story. Anthony wasn't a part of Hillsong, but his
story is all about being gay in the same type
of evangelical and Pentecostal churches, and his life story is
kind of living history and it helps us understand the
(15:56):
past and the present. There was constant prayer, daily prayer.
There was lots of self hatred and self loathing and
confession to God and tears and praying and fasting and
exorcisms though through then. Finally in nineteen seventy two, submitted
(16:17):
myself to a residential program, which was one of the
first two in the world before it became a formal
thing like Exodus Internationalists some people would know about. So
as full on, you know, it was my constant focus.
I have to get rid of this thing because God
can't use me with this sin in my life. So
(16:40):
I've been around long enough to see this whole thing
of old so as I say, I was one of
the first to go through a conversion therapy type program.
In those days, we didn't even have a name for it.
It later became known as b X game, but there
was no name when I was doing in the seventy two.
Many people know this gay conversion therapy, and millions of
(17:02):
gay people have been subjected to this. It's been banned
in some countries, but is still legal in many, including
in parts of mine. In twenty ten, Hillsong Band referrals
to X gay or conversion therapy programs. But you don't
have to have been through gay conversion therapy to have
experienced trauma. In many churches. You know the hurt and
(17:24):
the damage, the trauma that almost every single LGBTQ person
within a pedecostal or evangelical church has been through. They
need to experience, Healey. One of the ways is through
an apology. It is so important to have those people
say we are sorry. I talked about the residential program
(17:51):
I went through recently. I worked with that church to
become affirming, and I was there and they she's an
apology to me and to other people that have been harmed.
It's hard to describe in words just how meaningful and
how profound and how life changed, how a liberating that
(18:12):
can be for you. Fifty years later, and we went
and stood on the verandah where the leader of the program,
had humiliated me in front of my sister and brother
in law when they came to pick me up, and
her opening words to them was, your brother is one
of Sydney's worst homosexuals. And then she went on to
(18:36):
totally discredit me and shame me in front of them.
So after the apology, we walked down to the corner
of that veranda where that happened, and I took back
my power and I made some declarations about who I
am and who we are as LGBT people. I feel very,
very blessed, you know. I feel like I'm in a
(18:59):
good place that I would love to see others be
able to move on to that place, because I see
so many people still carrying the hurt and the trauma,
and I believe there's a way forward for you, and
I would love for you to experience some of that
resolution and some of that peace that I've found. Why
(19:24):
would someone who was treated so badly by evangelical Christians
want to spend a moment of his amazing life and
energy on them. It's because Anthony believes change is possible.
His work is about resolution, building bridges, and education. This
is how it works. Some people hate gay people, but
(19:46):
then others from hatred to dislike. Some people be from
dislike to discomfort. Some people then are able to be
from discomfort to tolerance, that others could be from tolerance
to accept the then people can be from acceptance to affirmation,
then finally to advocacy. So that's the continuum that I
(20:08):
work with with church leaders and Christian organizations to see
this as a journey that you are on and you
actually have made some progress in this. You're not back
with the people who hate people you know or that
you dislike. You know, you're in a much better space.
But you also need to do some work to move forward.
And what is it that you require to be able
(20:31):
to move forward? And it's going to be number one,
more education, more understanding. But of course they would never
really move forward unless they have some contact with LGBTQ people.
Anthony preached on a regular basis for Brain Houston A.
Hillsong from the time the church was founded until he
(20:52):
resigned from the ministry in nineteen ninety one and he
came out. So where does Anthony think Hillsong is on
the sliding scale from hatred to advocacy? I remember, but
I used to take Sometimes people used to say, oh,
we'd love to go to hill Song Church. I said, oh, well,
I'm happy to take you along, you know, and then
we would go to the coffee shop afterwards. And because
(21:14):
they was known there that one of the pastons will
come over and chat and introduced them to this dear person.
You know, they've just come to see what the churches
like us. They've heard so much about it. And invariably
the person would say, so, how do you feel about
gay or lesbian people here and the church? And almost
every single time, everybody would say, well, everybody's welcome here
(21:37):
like it. It It doesn't matter whether you're a prostitute, you know,
whether you were a burglar, whether you were a murderer,
no matter what, whether you've been to jail, everybody's welcome here.
What a slap in the face. And also it showed
it demonstrated the person's complete ignorance about sexual orientation. Behind
(21:58):
the scenes, Anthony van Brown was working to change that,
but churches like Hillsong walk with them line Brian hoosted
before he resigned for the ministry. You know, we were
having conversations Brian and I and the porter conversations. We
weren't making them public because once you make them public,
(22:19):
then suddenly everybody else gets on board and hijacks the conversations.
So that was something I learned very early, the piece
keep it all under wraps. Initially those conversations were very
amicable and respectful and warm and beneficial, I believe, and
I remember that Brian went to New Yorker did a
(22:43):
media conference, and at the media conference he was asked about, so,
what's your view on gay marriage? And he was being
very careful about how he worded things, and instead of
being condemning, he said, you're, well, you know, this is
an important issue that all churches are dearly with and
(23:04):
it's true. It was not just hill Song, it was
it's run across Christendom. And he says, the church is
deally with this, and we're having conversations what he was
he was having them with me. But as soon as
he said that, there was this huge backlash from the conservatives.
What do you media having a conversation. There's no conversation
(23:26):
to be had. The Bibles really clear, you know these
people need to be pedan come to Jesus. So then
I call it the homosexual hip hop. The pope doesn't.
Bride's done it several times, so there where they get
the backlash, then they have to then jump in and
then issue another media release. And his media release was
needs a lot of work. I wish I could have
(23:47):
helped him with that because it used all the red
flag words like gay lifestyle you know, and practicing you know,
Oh my god, all the wrong words. I know what
he was trying to say, but we're using or the
wrong worthy, which then cause another Then it wasn't the conservatives,
it was the LGBT people and their allies who are
(24:07):
up in I was like, how can what do you
mean the lifestyle? What's this lifestyle business you're talking about? Yeah,
so to ask you a questions, I think that here's
something interesting which possibly a lot of your listeners would
not know about. There are meetings of big megachurch pastors
(24:32):
every day and again who get together as anybody would,
to talk about the issues that they're facing, all that
sort of stuff. And I do happen to know that
within those meetings the gay issue is brought up, and
that there are mega church pastors who are further along
(24:53):
the continuum than they would ever admit. Publicly. And so
within these mega church fast as, there are pastors which
are pretty well at the point where they have accepted
that gay marriage is okay. But if they ever said
that for the pulpit, that they could lose half their
(25:13):
congregation tomorrow. So the thing that's holding that back Number
one is power. A church split is very traumatic, by
the way, on all people involved. I would wish that
on anybody. But also there's the financial aspect. Don't you
lose half your congregation, you lose half of your financial
support as well. So there's a lot at stake, which
(25:33):
is why they're not standing up and saying this is
what I believe. Which, of course, when you consider that
some of them are writing a lot about leadership, well hello,
does it the leaders stand out and actually lead where
he believes is the right way to take a congregation
(25:56):
or you play it safe and a lot of the players.
And that brings me right back to Boston and my
Hillsong story. It's October of twenty nineteen. I knew I
was queer, and I was deep into the church that
was not being honest. Was Hillsong ready to affirm me?
(26:17):
My leader of Hillsong urged me to identify as a
child of God. I wasn't buying that. Next one of
the Boston pastors, Steve de Grosa, stepped in with an offer,
I want to mentor you. And I look at him
and it's this white guy, a straight, cisgender Christian white man,
(26:41):
which is like all the privileges you can think of
in this country, in the US, And I'm like, you
want to mentor a brown queer, a non binary Latin
XT person. I'm like, okay. I didn't tell him those identities,
but that's what I was going through my head. I
(27:02):
was like, how can you provide any guidance to someone
like me? But I was like, okay, sure, yeah, Like
I'm down. I honestly just like didn't really care. And
then we go back to the LGBTQ conversation and I say, well,
that's honestly holding me back because I have not had
(27:23):
a straight answer from anyone. What is hillsong stance on
LGBTQ people and what are the LGBTQ policies that this
church has. He kind of just stays quiet, and he's like, well,
you know, it's a case by case basis. So he
starts giving me the same response that my leader had
given me, and I'm like, I'm not going to fall
(27:45):
for this again. By this point, I had learned about
queer theology and I knew how to ask these type
of questions and how to frame him in the way
to help you realize if this was a safe, affirming
church or not. So I look at him and I say, Okay,
like I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole
with you. Of like, it's a case by case basis
(28:06):
and it depends on the pastor and this and that.
I was like, I'm going to ask you yes or
no questions, and he's like okay. I was like, would you,
as a pastor who's ordained, be able to marry me
and my partner who happens to be of the same sex.
And he just stares at me and is like, well,
(28:26):
at Hillsong Church, we don't really perform marriages. It's rare
on rare occasions for like friends and family. And I'm like, okay, Steve,
you are my friend, are you not? And he's like,
well yeah. I was like, okay, you as my friend.
I go to you and I say, hey, Steve, can
you marry my partner? And I who happens to be
of the same sex. We want to get married, and
(28:48):
we've been together for a while and it's a loving, consensual,
committed relationship. And he kind of just stares at me
and it is like, well no, and I'm like okay,
and he's like, well, I believe marriage is between an
amount and a woman. And he goes off a spiel
and I'm like, Okay, that's not what we're going to
(29:09):
go into. You said no, we're taking them now. It's like,
next question. And I started feeling like a lawyer in
this moment and someone was on the stance, and I say, okay,
next question. I am a qualified public health professional and
Hillsong posts a job description for someone they're looking for
to hire. It is an amazing job, and I have
(29:32):
all the qualifications to perform that job, and I apply
to that job. But I happen to be married to
someone of the same sex, or I happen to be
openly queer. Would Hillsong Church hire me or at least
let me go through the interview process or anything. Would
(29:53):
they just hire me if I happen to be queer,
Like if that happens to be another one my identities
and openly queer, not hidden like openly and he stays quiet.
He's like, well, we don't know who's going to apply
and who's going to go through the process. And I'm like,
that's not the question, like reassess, like coming back, would
(30:15):
Hillsock to retire me as an openly queer person for
this job that I'm like qualified and maybe even overly qualified?
And he's like, well, no, because the people we hire
at Hillsong need to have the same stance and we
believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.
And I was like, Okay, finally someone said something. Thank you,
(30:37):
that's the answer I've been looking for for almost two years.
And he kind of realizes that he fucked up because
he told me and he was like, um, well, you know,
like I said, it's a case by case spaces, so
we don't really know. And I was like, no, that's
all I needed to hear. And I was like, I
honestly feel like I have finally had the answers that
(30:59):
I needed, that I've been asking for for over a year,
and I am ready to go. It makes me smile
listening to myself just remembering how I put them through
the ringer when you know what questions you should ask.
It seems so simple, doesn't it, But it took a
(31:19):
long time to get out. I want to thank Andrew
and Anthony for sharing their story. You can learn more
about the work Anthony ben Brown is doing at Ambassadors
and bridge Builders International on the website at www dot
abbi dot org dot AU. And my mom. She went
(31:46):
to a women's conference for her church and stood up
and talk to people about me. She shared her story
and how she was struggling, but she was also encouraging
them to love people like me, to love gay people,
to love LGBTQ people, because the way the church was
treating us was not the way Jesus would for me.
(32:10):
It was shocking. Honestly, I didn't expect her to get
up and talk about me. She was in a church
that was excluding people like me, and for her to
do that was going to cause retaliation for her, and
it did. So I'm really proud of her because I
realized that she was actually listening, that she was actually learning,
(32:33):
and that she was actually putting that into practice by
sharing with others and encouraging them to love LGBTQ people
in general, and the next part of my story, I
hit my lowest point. My mental health crisis leads me
to a psychiatric hospital and an incredible friendship. A drag
(32:56):
queen and a bad sermon from Carl Lentz only gets
me to the exit door.
This is false prophets. The story of Hillsong, the Hipster's church.
It made millions of dollars, turned preachers into stars, but
fell to earth. I left Hillsong feeling spiritually abused and exploited,
and now I'm telling my story of life inside the megachurch.
(00:23):
I'm no Ami Uribe, and I'm proud to say I'm queer.
This episode is deeply personal. It's about my sexual identity
and rejection that might resonate with you, and I know
that could be triggering for some of you. The stories
you are going to hear are intense, with some moments
of distress, but also moments of joy. In twenty seventeen,
(00:49):
the year when I first walked into Hillsong Church, I
saw the huge welcome home sign. I thought welcome home
meant everyone. Later on I learned that welcome home had
terms and conditions at the bottom. That we're invisible, but
you kind of learn as you go. I'm mosta, how
(01:13):
are you? I'm good. This is my mom, Lorenza. She
was born in Mexico and lives in Arizona. We talked
most days, so I've had a bit of a bicultural
That's what I like to call it bicultural experience in
two countries where I can speak in Spanish and I
(01:33):
don't have an accent because I learned it so young,
and I don't have much of an accent in English either.
My parents told us that inside our home it was
Mexico we needed to speak Spanish, and as soon as
we stepped outside the door, it was the US and
we had to speak English. My mom's church preached that
homosexuality is a sin. I grew up in that kind
(01:56):
of church, and I walked away. When I moved to Boston,
I found Hillsong and I started to explore my sexual identity. Finally,
it was time to have a conversation with my mom,
so I ended up calling my mom after work. I
was laying on my bed and my room was really dark.
I wanted the safety of darkness. I don't know why
(02:18):
I felt safe in that. And I dial the phone
and I call my mom. I say I need to
tell you something, and she stays really quiet, and she
asked me, yeah, like what's happening, what's going on? And
I tell her I'm queer. I don't know what this
means for religion. I don't know what this means for
my life. But I need you to know that this
(02:41):
is who I am, and I'm letting you in a
little bit more into who I am as a person.
I'm figuring things out, and I know you're going to
have a lot of questions coming from her perspective as
a person who had been in the church I grew
up in. She immediately to You're going to hell, and
(03:02):
she started crying and had so much fear in her
in her voice, because that's all I could hear. I
could see, I could hear and feel that fear that
she had that I was not going to be in
heaven with her and she was losing me. And she
started bible thomping, which was what often we use when
(03:23):
someone is just throwing scripture at you and like hurting
you with a Bible as if they were banging the
Bible on your body. And so I had to go
back in my mind to the sessions and therapy where
I had talked to my therapist that if this happened,
I needed to set a boundary. I stopped her and
I said, Mom, I cannot do this right now. If
(03:45):
you're going to continue not allowing me to speak, if
you're going to continue to be hurtful with your words.
I need to step away. So I said, I'm going
to hang up the phone and I will leave it
at that, and I did. If you've been through this,
you need to know that you have good friends. You
need to know you are loved. You need to be affirmed.
(04:09):
Step by step, I started to find out if Hillsong
was going to affirm me. First, I talked to my leader.
I vividly remember she was folding her clothes, her laundry,
and she asked me, so, what happened last night? And
I was like, seriously, Like I had said, I didn't
(04:29):
want to talk about this, and she says, well, why
did you feel the need to come out to your mom?
And I tell her because it's a big part of
who I am, and I wanted to no longer be
hiding this from her. I want to be openly me,
all of me. And she tells me, well, what is identity?
(04:51):
Is an identity so elusive? And I say, what, Like,
identity is a big part of who we are where
there's so many little things that make up our identity.
But I start telling her all of these identities. I'm
Latin X, I am a student. I am a Christian
(05:11):
at that time, and all of these things are coming up,
and I was like, this is who what makes who
I am? And being queer is right now a big
part of that identity. And she says, well, shouldn't our
identity in Christ be so much bigger than all of that?
Shouldn't you be identifying as a child of God first?
(05:34):
And I tell her, well, one thing isn't before the other.
It's just a whole combilation of who you are. It's
like a big circle. And that was really really eye
opening for me and for our friendship. And I realized
in that moment that I was not going to have
save conversations with her about this. It went from experiencing
(05:56):
friendship and everything so beautifully to having to hide this
big part of me and not be able to show that,
of fanning the door like it's beautiful. Yeah, it's beautiful.
Andrew and Anthony arriving at a hot studio in Sydney.
To be honest, if you had asked me to wake
(06:17):
up a seven am, I would have politely said nine.
They're linking up with us to talk about sex, identity
and God. Yeah. Andrew found Jesus at Hillsong when he
was thirteen years old. He's now thirty seven. Anthony is
a former Pentecostal preacher. He's seventy one. I'm twenty seven now.
(06:39):
So between us we have more than five decades of
the bizarre and painful things religion can throw at us.
LGBTQ people. Oh, three of us like to laugh at stuff,
but some of it has been really, really bad, and
we are all healing. Here's Andrew. I would say that
we are an ongoing work in progress. I think the
(07:02):
human experience is one of navigation and exploration, not setting
and forgetting. And so I would say that even with
these very challenging experiences, that sometimes it does take time
and not to judge that. And so one of the
things that I often think about and have been invited
(07:23):
to think about in the last several months, is honoring
the fact that my experience at Hillsong Church has been
an experience of complex trauma and complex PTSD. This for
me is a powerful remembering, a powerful telling of my
story that I think is really important to my healing
(07:47):
and really important to the next several decades that I
have here on this planet. Andrew wrote an amazing heartbreaking
blog about his experience. He's going to read some of it.
We start in the summer of nineteen ninety seven, the
summer Andrew discovered Hillsong. Wow. What an intoxicating mix of fellowship, community, love,
(08:12):
acceptance and best of all, great music. I finally had
an identity and an identity in Christ. I had instant friends,
I had a community. I also had two goals. Number
one be more like Jesus and number two sing in
(08:34):
that bloody band. I didn't have criteria, you know, the
criteria of a thirteen year old walking into a church.
I needed just love. And Hillsong at that time was
exciting and expansive. We were recording albums and you know,
new convention centers and the Prime Minister opening a building
(08:57):
in Norwest of Sydney. You know, music pumping, and lives changed,
meaning created. It was everything. I embraced every single aspect
of Hillsong Church. I was thriving in my new found faith, well,
at least thriving on the outside, hidden behind closed doors.
(09:22):
I had a really big conflict and at the time
I definitely did not have the resources to handle it.
It turned out I had quite a strong passion for
looking at naked men, a passion I could not shake
very easily. This secret would stay with me for many
years and actually come to haunt my every day. When
(09:46):
I was twenty years old, it came time to tell
Hillsong leadership about my big, dark and scary secret. My
world instantly collapsed. Leadership asked me to leave the worship team.
I was asked not to tell anyone, and as a result,
I became incredibly isolated in my sin. I sobbed most
(10:08):
of these days. I felt numb. I feared that this
sense of evilness and isolation would never ever end. My
friends of ten years plus were not able to offer
support or love because they were kept totally in the dark.
I was encouraged to exercise to enhance my masculinity. We
(10:31):
prayed the demons off my back, and I was sent
to an outside minister for counseling who had a specialization
in homosexuality and more earth shatteringly for me, child sex offenders.
I felt evil beyond words. I felt demons crawling all
(10:52):
over my body, and the depths of despair cannot be
described here. The identity I had rated within God's eyes
had vanished overnight. It is hard to say how one
survives these earth shattering moments, but most of us do.
Andrew decided to tell a close circle of friends and
(11:14):
leaders at Hillsong that he was going to live as
a gay man. He sent an email explaining his decision
and telling them he was leaving the church. Andrew said
I love you and asked for their love and return.
What happened after that is everyone abandoned the situation and
(11:38):
refused to engage, except for this email that I got
from the most senior pastor that I was sort of
being handled by at the church. So I sent that email.
Let me just give you the date. I sent that
in June twenty five, and I received this email back
(11:59):
from Hillsong. This is from an at Hillsong dot com address.
Hey Bro. Sorry, that's really funny. Can you believe he
wrote hey bro like it's actually written there? Oh my
fucking god, Hey Bro, I had a good read through
your email. I am a bit surprised, but not shocked.
(12:21):
I am going to have a shot at looking through
the eyes of the spirit to see if I can't
shed some light on your thinking. It's a long email
with references to lust of the flesh and advice to
Andrew that he should listen to his inner man. It
rounds off with this, even though you have thought this through,
(12:42):
it is possible that you have been influenced by the
enemy and his tactics. So I think it would be
good to talk this over and make sure that you
are not deceived or influenced by the spirit of the world,
which is very pro towards this type of lifestyle. See
what you think, still here to help out. I ignored
(13:04):
that email back in the day. Doesn't even hurt to read,
because it's just mad Hillsong speak. Mad hearing Andrew's story
is not shocking to me. Sad, yes, but not surprising.
The level of intensity is greater than mine, and the
(13:26):
counseling he was referred to costs so much pain. But
I do identify with what he suffered, and I admire
his courage. I look back at my twenty year old self,
the brave one who, even in that intoxication of Hillsong,
backed himself to leave. And you know, I sit here
(13:48):
feeling quite powerful that at twenty and twenty one, I
was able to make those moves and step out and
create the life that I get to live now. As
a thirty seven year old. It makes me think of
the things that I would like an apology for, potentially
if it was possible, But I just don't think it
(14:08):
is possible, which is, you know, the silence and the
shaming when I disclosed my same sex attraction to leadership
and the leadership response and being sent to an outside counselor,
and that really really fucking with my mind. You know
(14:31):
what I would love I want people to recognize that
these sorts of decisions made out of faith and what
they would describe as love or God's plan and their
lasting pain, hurt and harm that is caused by those
types of decisions. I would love for them to be
(14:54):
able to see it, connect to it. That's what I
would like them to know. I am Anthony Van Brown,
and in the form of lit I thought I was
a high profile Pentecostal preacher. I am the founder and
CEO of Ambassadors at Bridge build As International Abbey as
(15:15):
we call it, and author of the best seller A
Lot of That Learning a preachers struggle with his homosexuality
Church at Faith. Anthony is a really big part of
Andrew's story. When Andrew first read Anthony's life story, he says,
it was like every cell in my body was being noticed.
(15:36):
Anthony stories extreme, but in a way it is all
our story. Anthony wasn't a part of Hillsong, but his
story is all about being gay in the same type
of evangelical and Pentecostal churches, and his life story is
kind of living history and it helps us understand the
(15:56):
past and the present. There was constant prayer, daily prayer.
There was lots of self hatred and self loathing and
confession to God and tears and praying and fasting and
exorcisms though through then. Finally in nineteen seventy two, submitted
(16:17):
myself to a residential program, which was one of the
first two in the world before it became a formal
thing like Exodus Internationalists some people would know about. So
as full on, you know, it was my constant focus.
I have to get rid of this thing because God
can't use me with this sin in my life. So
(16:40):
I've been around long enough to see this whole thing
of old so as I say, I was one of
the first to go through a conversion therapy type program.
In those days, we didn't even have a name for it.
It later became known as b X game, but there
was no name when I was doing in the seventy two.
Many people know this gay conversion therapy, and millions of
(17:02):
gay people have been subjected to this. It's been banned
in some countries, but is still legal in many, including
in parts of mine. In twenty ten, Hillsong Band referrals
to X gay or conversion therapy programs. But you don't
have to have been through gay conversion therapy to have
experienced trauma. In many churches. You know the hurt and
(17:24):
the damage, the trauma that almost every single LGBTQ person
within a pedecostal or evangelical church has been through. They
need to experience, Healey. One of the ways is through
an apology. It is so important to have those people
say we are sorry. I talked about the residential program
(17:51):
I went through recently. I worked with that church to
become affirming, and I was there and they she's an
apology to me and to other people that have been harmed.
It's hard to describe in words just how meaningful and
how profound and how life changed, how a liberating that
(18:12):
can be for you. Fifty years later, and we went
and stood on the verandah where the leader of the program,
had humiliated me in front of my sister and brother
in law when they came to pick me up, and
her opening words to them was, your brother is one
of Sydney's worst homosexuals. And then she went on to
(18:36):
totally discredit me and shame me in front of them.
So after the apology, we walked down to the corner
of that veranda where that happened, and I took back
my power and I made some declarations about who I
am and who we are as LGBT people. I feel very,
very blessed, you know. I feel like I'm in a
(18:59):
good place that I would love to see others be
able to move on to that place, because I see
so many people still carrying the hurt and the trauma,
and I believe there's a way forward for you, and
I would love for you to experience some of that
resolution and some of that peace that I've found. Why
(19:24):
would someone who was treated so badly by evangelical Christians
want to spend a moment of his amazing life and
energy on them. It's because Anthony believes change is possible.
His work is about resolution, building bridges, and education. This
is how it works. Some people hate gay people, but
(19:46):
then others from hatred to dislike. Some people be from
dislike to discomfort. Some people then are able to be
from discomfort to tolerance, that others could be from tolerance
to accept the then people can be from acceptance to affirmation,
then finally to advocacy. So that's the continuum that I
(20:08):
work with with church leaders and Christian organizations to see
this as a journey that you are on and you
actually have made some progress in this. You're not back
with the people who hate people you know or that
you dislike. You know, you're in a much better space.
But you also need to do some work to move forward.
And what is it that you require to be able
(20:31):
to move forward? And it's going to be number one,
more education, more understanding. But of course they would never
really move forward unless they have some contact with LGBTQ people.
Anthony preached on a regular basis for Brain Houston A.
Hillsong from the time the church was founded until he
(20:52):
resigned from the ministry in nineteen ninety one and he
came out. So where does Anthony think Hillsong is on
the sliding scale from hatred to advocacy? I remember, but
I used to take Sometimes people used to say, oh,
we'd love to go to hill Song Church. I said, oh, well,
I'm happy to take you along, you know, and then
we would go to the coffee shop afterwards. And because
(21:14):
they was known there that one of the pastons will
come over and chat and introduced them to this dear person.
You know, they've just come to see what the churches
like us. They've heard so much about it. And invariably
the person would say, so, how do you feel about
gay or lesbian people here and the church? And almost
every single time, everybody would say, well, everybody's welcome here
(21:37):
like it. It It doesn't matter whether you're a prostitute, you know,
whether you were a burglar, whether you were a murderer,
no matter what, whether you've been to jail, everybody's welcome here.
What a slap in the face. And also it showed
it demonstrated the person's complete ignorance about sexual orientation. Behind
(21:58):
the scenes, Anthony van Brown was working to change that,
but churches like Hillsong walk with them line Brian hoosted
before he resigned for the ministry. You know, we were
having conversations Brian and I and the porter conversations. We
weren't making them public because once you make them public,
(22:19):
then suddenly everybody else gets on board and hijacks the conversations.
So that was something I learned very early, the piece
keep it all under wraps. Initially those conversations were very
amicable and respectful and warm and beneficial, I believe, and
I remember that Brian went to New Yorker did a
(22:43):
media conference, and at the media conference he was asked about, so,
what's your view on gay marriage? And he was being
very careful about how he worded things, and instead of
being condemning, he said, you're, well, you know, this is
an important issue that all churches are dearly with and
(23:04):
it's true. It was not just hill Song, it was
it's run across Christendom. And he says, the church is
deally with this, and we're having conversations what he was
he was having them with me. But as soon as
he said that, there was this huge backlash from the conservatives.
What do you media having a conversation. There's no conversation
(23:26):
to be had. The Bibles really clear, you know these
people need to be pedan come to Jesus. So then
I call it the homosexual hip hop. The pope doesn't.
Bride's done it several times, so there where they get
the backlash, then they have to then jump in and
then issue another media release. And his media release was
needs a lot of work. I wish I could have
(23:47):
helped him with that because it used all the red
flag words like gay lifestyle you know, and practicing you know,
Oh my god, all the wrong words. I know what
he was trying to say, but we're using or the
wrong worthy, which then cause another Then it wasn't the conservatives,
it was the LGBT people and their allies who are
(24:07):
up in I was like, how can what do you
mean the lifestyle? What's this lifestyle business you're talking about? Yeah,
so to ask you a questions, I think that here's
something interesting which possibly a lot of your listeners would
not know about. There are meetings of big megachurch pastors
(24:32):
every day and again who get together as anybody would,
to talk about the issues that they're facing, all that
sort of stuff. And I do happen to know that
within those meetings the gay issue is brought up, and
that there are mega church pastors who are further along
(24:53):
the continuum than they would ever admit. Publicly. And so
within these mega church fast as, there are pastors which
are pretty well at the point where they have accepted
that gay marriage is okay. But if they ever said
that for the pulpit, that they could lose half their
(25:13):
congregation tomorrow. So the thing that's holding that back Number
one is power. A church split is very traumatic, by
the way, on all people involved. I would wish that
on anybody. But also there's the financial aspect. Don't you
lose half your congregation, you lose half of your financial
support as well. So there's a lot at stake, which
(25:33):
is why they're not standing up and saying this is
what I believe. Which, of course, when you consider that
some of them are writing a lot about leadership, well hello,
does it the leaders stand out and actually lead where
he believes is the right way to take a congregation
(25:56):
or you play it safe and a lot of the players.
And that brings me right back to Boston and my
Hillsong story. It's October of twenty nineteen. I knew I
was queer, and I was deep into the church that
was not being honest. Was Hillsong ready to affirm me?
(26:17):
My leader of Hillsong urged me to identify as a
child of God. I wasn't buying that. Next one of
the Boston pastors, Steve de Grosa, stepped in with an offer,
I want to mentor you. And I look at him
and it's this white guy, a straight, cisgender Christian white man,
(26:41):
which is like all the privileges you can think of
in this country, in the US, And I'm like, you
want to mentor a brown queer, a non binary Latin
XT person. I'm like, okay. I didn't tell him those identities,
but that's what I was going through my head. I
(27:02):
was like, how can you provide any guidance to someone
like me? But I was like, okay, sure, yeah, Like
I'm down. I honestly just like didn't really care. And
then we go back to the LGBTQ conversation and I say, well,
that's honestly holding me back because I have not had
(27:23):
a straight answer from anyone. What is hillsong stance on
LGBTQ people and what are the LGBTQ policies that this
church has. He kind of just stays quiet, and he's like, well,
you know, it's a case by case basis. So he
starts giving me the same response that my leader had
given me, and I'm like, I'm not going to fall
(27:45):
for this again. By this point, I had learned about
queer theology and I knew how to ask these type
of questions and how to frame him in the way
to help you realize if this was a safe, affirming
church or not. So I look at him and I say, Okay,
like I'm not going to go down this rabbit hole
with you. Of like, it's a case by case basis
(28:06):
and it depends on the pastor and this and that.
I was like, I'm going to ask you yes or
no questions, and he's like okay. I was like, would you,
as a pastor who's ordained, be able to marry me
and my partner who happens to be of the same sex.
And he just stares at me and is like, well,
(28:26):
at Hillsong Church, we don't really perform marriages. It's rare
on rare occasions for like friends and family. And I'm like, okay, Steve,
you are my friend, are you not? And he's like,
well yeah. I was like, okay, you as my friend.
I go to you and I say, hey, Steve, can
you marry my partner? And I who happens to be
of the same sex. We want to get married, and
(28:48):
we've been together for a while and it's a loving, consensual,
committed relationship. And he kind of just stares at me
and it is like, well no, and I'm like okay,
and he's like, well, I believe marriage is between an
amount and a woman. And he goes off a spiel
and I'm like, Okay, that's not what we're going to
(29:09):
go into. You said no, we're taking them now. It's like,
next question. And I started feeling like a lawyer in
this moment and someone was on the stance, and I say, okay,
next question. I am a qualified public health professional and
Hillsong posts a job description for someone they're looking for
to hire. It is an amazing job, and I have
(29:32):
all the qualifications to perform that job, and I apply
to that job. But I happen to be married to
someone of the same sex, or I happen to be
openly queer. Would Hillsong Church hire me or at least
let me go through the interview process or anything. Would
(29:53):
they just hire me if I happen to be queer,
Like if that happens to be another one my identities
and openly queer, not hidden like openly and he stays quiet.
He's like, well, we don't know who's going to apply
and who's going to go through the process. And I'm like,
that's not the question, like reassess, like coming back, would
(30:15):
Hillsock to retire me as an openly queer person for
this job that I'm like qualified and maybe even overly qualified?
And he's like, well, no, because the people we hire
at Hillsong need to have the same stance and we
believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.
And I was like, Okay, finally someone said something. Thank you,
(30:37):
that's the answer I've been looking for for almost two years.
And he kind of realizes that he fucked up because
he told me and he was like, um, well, you know,
like I said, it's a case by case spaces, so
we don't really know. And I was like, no, that's
all I needed to hear. And I was like, I
honestly feel like I have finally had the answers that
(30:59):
I needed, that I've been asking for for over a year,
and I am ready to go. It makes me smile
listening to myself just remembering how I put them through
the ringer when you know what questions you should ask.
It seems so simple, doesn't it, But it took a
(31:19):
long time to get out. I want to thank Andrew
and Anthony for sharing their story. You can learn more
about the work Anthony ben Brown is doing at Ambassadors
and bridge Builders International on the website at www dot
abbi dot org dot AU. And my mom. She went
(31:46):
to a women's conference for her church and stood up
and talk to people about me. She shared her story
and how she was struggling, but she was also encouraging
them to love people like me, to love gay people,
to love LGBTQ people, because the way the church was
treating us was not the way Jesus would for me.
(32:10):
It was shocking. Honestly, I didn't expect her to get
up and talk about me. She was in a church
that was excluding people like me, and for her to
do that was going to cause retaliation for her, and
it did. So I'm really proud of her because I
realized that she was actually listening, that she was actually learning,
(32:33):
and that she was actually putting that into practice by
sharing with others and encouraging them to love LGBTQ people
in general, and the next part of my story, I
hit my lowest point. My mental health crisis leads me
to a psychiatric hospital and an incredible friendship. A drag
(32:56):
queen and a bad sermon from Carl Lentz only gets
me to the exit door.
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