I woke up this morning to find yet another piece of tabloid journalism about the Hillsong Church and their alleged
involvement with Australian Idol. This article talks about how the church are threatening to sue Today Tonight over these allegations, made in three “exclusive” stories recently.
I realised I haven’t talked about these stories that have littered the media. I believed they’d probably die down just as quickly as they flared up. But unlike other years (because if you’ve followed Idol for as long as I have, these stories crop up every year), this seems to be the story that won’t go away. So I figured I’d weigh in on the subject.
If you haven’t kept abreast of the gossip rags, the story goes a little something like this. Current affairs program Today Tonight claim that four of the remaining Australian Idol finalists – Tarisai Vushe, Matt Corby, Ben McKenzie, and Daniel Mifsud – are members of the Hillsong church. They say this church has manipulated its congregation to vote for these four, and are therefore unfairly influencing the outcome of the show.
Hillsong denied any of the contestants are members of their church. It then came out that the quartet are members of the Assemblies of God churches, which includes Hillsong, and Shirelive. It was also revealed that past finalists Guy Sebastian, Paulini, and Dean Geyer were also members of the Assemblies of God.
At the end of the day, I don’t understand what the fuss is. I think it’s only natural that churches encourage their congregation to support other members of the church. It’s really no different to the town of Condoblin getting behind Shannon Noll, or Carl’s Navy buddies supporting him.
The four contestants have consistently performed well week after week, and I believe it’s their talent – rather than their faith – that sees them still in the comp. When they have faltered (and sometimes when they haven’t), Tarisai and Daniel have been in the bottom three so obviously the church vote doesn’t count for all that much. If anything, perhaps we can thank the churches for giving these talented youngsters a place to hone their singing skills in the first place.
Image source: jess_war @ Flickr