Tag: religion/cults

Documentary: Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed

The decline of a megachurch, and an empire

A church behaving badly is not all that unique, and the Hillsong megachurch is one of the more recent examples. Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed sheds light on the illegal and un-Christian activities that stood in the way of the church’s goal to take over the world.

Hillsong’s lofty aims were to reach past the worlds of religion and music into realms of higher education and film, and across continents. Impeding these goals were the misdeeds of its pastors and staff, who were involved in sexual misconduct, financial fraud, sexual abuse, and even rape, misdeeds that filtered up into its highest levels to Brian Houston, its former senior pastor, and his father, Frank Houston, Hillsong’s founder.

The four-episode docuseries (featured on Discovery+) starts by laying out the promise of Hillsong, its celebrity congregants, and its expansion, then uncovers the sexual misconduct and affairs of New York City pastor Carl Lentz. Episodes first recount Hillsong’s origins in Australia, its supposed culture of openness, its preaching of the prosperity gospel, and its loyal volunteers. Later episodes show how this dream disintegrated into lies, scandal, fraud, and criminal charges.

Documentary: Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult

The strange story of how TikTok dancers were sucked into a cult

Cults come in a variety of flavors, but they all serve the same purpose: control. And Robert Shinn follows that formula with his cult. In 1994, he founded Shekinah Church, a church for Korean Americans, then slowly began to control its members by convincing them to work in his many businesses and give him most of the money they earned. But this was not enough for him. In 2021, he decided to combine religion with entertainment when he searched for dancers on TikTok for his talent management company, 7M Films, and then pushed them into joining Shekinah. He did these things not because he was a truly religious man or truly interested in helping young people with their careers, but for the typical reasons of a cult leader: money and power.

The three-episode Netflix docuseries Dancing for the Devil describes how Shinn turned these dancers into Shekinah followers and cult members who he isolated from their families and took advantage of financially. It follows the Wilking family as they try to get their daughter Miranda to leave the cult. It also follows former members filing civil and criminal charges against its Shinn and others, and brings on other members who left the cult.

Documentary: Escaping Twin Flames

A cult manipulates people looking for true love

If you could find true love, how far would you go to get it? Would you join a cult? That’s the question asked by Escaping Twin Flames. Twin Flames Universe preyed on people’s desires to find love, by espousing the doctrine that everyone has a “twin flame,” a person who is the other half of their shared soul. It promised people that its methods—and its expensive courses and coaching sessions—would help them find that person, and as a result, find happiness.

But Twin Flames Universe was—and still is—a cult, and this documentary outlines just how crazy its beliefs are. From advocating stalking and harassment, to pushing members to work for the cult, to claiming that one of the leaders, Jeff Ayan, was Christ-like, the cult used typical manipulation tactics to control its members, take their money, and convince them to do whatever its leaders wanted.

Twin Flames Universe made many promises to its members, promises that it could not keep when the soulmates the leaders guaranteed people did not manifest themselves. But because it had brainwashed its members into believing its unbelievable concepts, Twin Flames convinced members to follow new promises, new doctrine, and new guidance about how to find true love, to the point of some changing their gender identity. As the cult morphed, some members saw the true darkness underneath this twisted facade and left. Others, however, are still beholden to its nonsense.

Netflix’s three-part docuseries charts the rise of the cult and the realizations of members who left, as well as documenting the heartbreaking stories of family members of those still in the cult struggling to get them back.