Cool Christianity: Hillsong and the Fashioning of Cosmopolitan Identities

Hillsong, an Australian megachurch founded in 1983, is now a global phenomenon. It has branches in most global cities and award-winning worship bands that tour the world and whose music is sung weekly by an estimated 50 million people in 60 languages. Moreover, the megachurch and its bands have an immense presence on social media with millions of followers. The scandals around sex and money that have rocked Hillsong in recent times have been reported globally in the mainstream secular media, reflecting the megachurch’s prominence.

Hillsong’s style of Pentecostalism relies on a deep engagement with consumer capitalism, as well as celebrity, youth, and digital cultures. In Cool Christianity, Cristina Rocha tells the story of how Hillsong’s ＂Cool Christianity＂ aesthetic allowed it to make inroads among the Brazilian middle classes, who adopted Hillsong’s brand of Christianity as a way of becoming cosmopolitan and establishing class boundaries. Rocha draws on the theoretical frameworks of material religion and lived religion to show how religion can be made globally relevant to young people through cool aesthetics, affect, and engagement with consumer culture--from fashion to music to branding--in the digital age.

Cristina Rocha is Professor of Anthropology at Western Sydney University, Australia. She is the author of the award-winning book John of God: The Globalization of Brazilian Faith Healing (OUP 2017). Rocha co-edits the Journal of Global Buddhism and the Brill series Religion in the Americas. She was a fellow of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (2021-22) and President of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion (2017-19). She has held Visiting Research positions at Utrecht University, Kings College, the CUNY Graduate Centre, and the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Her publications have been translated into Spanish, French and Portuguese.