Hillsong Church

This book highlights the expansion of the influential Pentecostal Hillsong Church global megachurch network from Australia across global cities. Drawing on ethnographic research in Amsterdam and New York City, Klaver shows that global cities harbor nodes in transnational religious networks. By taking a lived religion approach, media is analysed as an integral part of everyday practices of interaction, expression and consumption of religion. Key question are raised regarding how processes of mediatization shape, alter and challenge this thriving cosmopolitan expression of Pentecostalism. Current debates in the study of religion are also addressed: religious belonging and community in global cities; the interrelation between media technology, religious practices and beliefs; religion, media and social engagement in global cities; media and emerging modes of religious leadership and authority. Pressing societal issues such as institutional responses to sexual abuse of children, views on gender roles, misogyny and mediated constructions of femininity are discussed. The book will be of interest to students and researchers of anthropology of religion, religious studies, sociology of religion, particularly religion and globalisation, religion and media and urban religion. Miranda Klaver is Professor, Anthropology of Religion at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.