Controversial, disgraced and “anti-women” American pastor, Mark Driscoll, has been caught in the line of fire this weekend, as Hillsong Australia faces pressure to cancel Driscoll’s appearance at the Hillsong Conference 2015.
Driscoll, who was forced to resign from his own church last year, has a notorious penchant for anti-women and homophobic statements published online. Some of those absolute zingers include, but are not limited to:
- “Within the covenant of marriage, men are the head and women are the helpers”
- “Ultimately, God created you and it is His penis. You are simply borrowing it for a while”
- That time he called women ‘penis homes’: “While His penis is on loan you must admit that it is sort of just hanging out there very lonely as if it needed a home, sort of like a man wandering the streets looking for a house to live in.”
- That time he called America a “pussified nation”
- When he described American men as, “men being raised by bitter penis-envying burned feministed single mothers”
While Hillsong has been facing mounting pressure to remove Driscoll from their upcoming program at Hillsong Conference 2015, the church’s founder Brian Houston stressed that Driscoll would not lecture or preach at the conference; rather, Driscoll and his wife—sorry, “penis home“, according to Driscoll—would be interviewed instead, with aims to discuss their previous “mistakes”. In a statement, Houston said:
“My aim is to have an in-depth conversation that gives insight into their hearts. Mark has been candid about mistakes he has made, and if we can, through our conference, help others through his life experiences, we think that will prove valuable.”
A Change.org petition has been established to “remove Mark Driscoll from the Hillsong Conferences” – citing Driscoll’s “hate speech” and “undermining” of the church’s beliefs. The petition, which extends to Hillsong’s European conferences, claims that Hillsong would be “endorsing and legitimising” Driscoll’s views by inviting him to their conferences.
