“The Music That Just About Everyone Sings”: Hillsong in American Evangelical Media

Abstract

This chapter explores Hillsong’s popularity in America by comparing Hillsong’s media reception in Australia with that in the United States. The celebratory evangelical media coverage of Hillsong in America stood in stark contrast to the critical reception the Australian megachurch received in its home country. Why? In Australia, Hillsong was a physical church, an institution incarnated in the suburbs of Sydney that its native neighbors had to reckon with and that its native media decried. Yet in America—far from its physical roots—Hillsong emerged as a musical phenomenon, an admired purveyor of modern musical liturgies, and a trusted source of the contemporary worship music reshaping American worship. Abstracted from its Australian incarnation, Hillsong-as-music in America evaded the theological controversy that hounded it at home.