Margaret Court is unquestionably Australia’s most successful tennis player. Playing in the 1960s and 1970s, Court amassed over 60 Grand Slam titles including eleven Australian Opens, five US Opens, five French Opens and three Wimbledon singles victories. In 1970 she won the Grand Slam i.e. all four major singles titles in a calendar year.

Court is now a ‘Word of Faith’ Pentecostal minister in Perth. Preachers like Margaret Court think that if you sincerely believe in God’s Word, i.e. the Bible, and you claim what you take to be the promises of God with your mouth - yes, you have to speak your prayer out loud, as well as basing it on ‘the Word’ - God will most certainly grant your desire.

This article explores Court’s odyssey and the strange world of Pentecostal ‘healing’ ministries.

Read the full article (PDF): Margaret Court’s Word of Faith

Filed in: Christian Right, Pentecostalism

I’ve always had a special interest in evangelical pastors who claim to be able to raise the dead. I’ve written one article on this topic and I was starting to organise the material for a second piece when I came across this story in Pastor Danny Nalliah’s autobiography Worship Under the Sword (5th ed. 2005). Nalliah, who was born in Sri Lanka, heads a Melbourne Pentecostal group called Catch the Fire Ministries (CTFM) and the following was one of his early experiences:

I was informed of a girl in our factory that had fallen seriously ill. The next thing I knew, I was in this girl’s house … She was lying on a bed, there was no movement at all, her eyes were open, but the black portion of the eyeball had gone in … Then the village doctor came in and pronounced her deceased … Then the Holy Ghost told me, ‘Command this girl to come back to life, in the name of Jesus’ … at once, I commanded the demon of death to come out in the name of Jesus, and the people [assembled in the room] looked at me in amazement. As I finished the girl gave out a scream, ‘Hoooo, hoooo’, she said, as she shook her head left to right. Her hair started blowing up, just as if she had a fan behind her head. All the people sitting and crying around her jumped up with fear. I ordered them all out of the place. Not all of them knew Jesus and I knew that the demon would go into one of them if they stayed … I continued commanding the demon of death to come out, in the name of Jesus. The girl continued to hoot and struggle, but after about four or five minutes I shouted, ‘Get out and get up in the name of Jesus’. The girl got up and sat down … That day the whole crowd bowed down to Jesus. (pp.25-6)

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Filed in: Evangelicals, Pentecostalism

Things are crook in Tallarook and quite a few other places around the country so the Pentecostal-dominated Australian Prayer Network is going to hold a ‘National Solemn Assembly’ in Canberra next March.

Now, when contemplating a National Solemn Assembly (NSA), it’s essential that you don’t laugh or even smile, so kindly keep a straight face until you’ve finished reading, as this will be a sign of maturity. (Come on, ‘fess up, you’ve failed already, haven’t you?)

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Filed in: Pentecostalism

Regular readers of this blog may recall some earlier discussions of ‘New Pentecostal’ craziness, among them ‘Australian Prayer Network: Pentecostal Fortune-Tellers‘ (16 Jul. 2005). That article looked at the charismatic gift of prophecy while this one deals with kids’ clothes, but we’re in the same neck of the woods.

Helen Deveraj contributed a piece entitled ‘Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing’ to the December 2006 issue of Salt Shakers Journal (pp.16-17). (Salt Shakers is operated by Baptists heavily influenced by the wilder variety of Pentecostalism). According to Helen:

All may not be what it seems in the clotheswear department. This article deals with my experiences with boyswear and my thoughts about it.

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Filed in: Pentecostalism

Lots of cracks are now appearing in the reputedly monolithic Christian right facade. Already squabbling with the Australian Christian Lobby over gay and lesbian issues, Peter and Jenny Stokes’ ‘Salt Shakers’ group is now having a go at backsliding mega-churches, Baptists and sympathetic National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce.

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Filed in: Pentecostalism, Politics, Sexuality

As I recall, this headline once appeared on the front page of the Beijing People’s Daily during the reign of Chairman Mao. The idea was that many nations were in political turmoil and that this augured well for the ultimate triumph of world revolution.

Many Christian fundamentalists and Pentecostals seem to view current events in a similar way. The world around us is downright awful and deteriorating rapidly but humanity’s dreadful, sinful and hopeless condition is itself a sure sign of Christ’s imminent return.

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Filed in: Fundamentalism, Pentecostalism

3. Andrew Evans

Andrew Evans, founder of the Family First Party (FFP) and since 2002 a Member of the South Australian Legislative Council, looks and talks like anyone’s grandpa. It’s hard to believe that this friendly old gaffer is a senior player in Australia’s Religious Right - but you’d better believe it.

Evans was born in India to missionary parents about 70 years ago. When he was 11, the family moved back to Australia and after a period of time, Andrew ‘came to an absolutely undeniable conclusion that the Bible was true’ and decided to become a pastor. You can read all about his career in his maiden speech to Parliament, delivered on 9 May 2002 - but suffice it to say that he rose to become the National Superintendent of the Assemblies of God (AOG) in Australia and held that position from 1977 until 1997. He was then appointed World Secretary of the AOG and also became a member of the World Executive of the Pentecostal movement, which has a total following of around half a billion people.

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Filed in: Pentecostalism, Politics

Did you know that the world is positively teeming with demons? They’re all over the place, rebelling against God, performing evil acts and ‘possessing’ human beings - even some Christians. Many, perhaps most, fundamentalists and Pentecostals believe that this is true and a lot of them are doing something about it. The ’something’ is called ’spiritual warfare’.

As Spirithome.com explains:

‘Spiritual warfare’ is the struggle to have life in this material world reflect as much as possible God’s loving governance. God is in charge, but there is an enemy that is in full-scale revolt … As with the unseen God, the forces behind the revolt are unseen, non-physical and supernatural. They lust after power in the world of visible, material beings.

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Filed in: Fundamentalism, Pentecostalism

‘New Pentecostals’, like the ones you’ll find at mega-churches such as Sydney’s Hillsong, are heavily into prophecy. The ability to forecast future events is regarded as a direct gift of God - specifically, his Holy Spirit division - and is one of the most highly-prized Pentecostal talents.

The Australian Prayer Network (APN) offers a collection of ‘Prophetic Words’ wherein we can avail ourselves of the divine wisdom. These forecasts come straight from the horse’s mouth, the prophet merely acting as a voicebox for his or her incorporeal master - especially when the prophecy is preceded by the words, ‘Thus saith the Lord’, as in, ‘Thus saith the Lord, thou shalt wear thy blue dress to the party next Saturday’; or sometimes, more dangerously, ‘Thus saith the Lord, thou shalt marry Jim and not Fred’ or ‘thou shalt become a missionary to Zaire’. It therefore comes as a surprise to see APN attaching the following exemption clause to its collection of pearls:

The extent to which [these prophecies] reflect the word of the Lord is left to the discernment of the reader.

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Filed in: Christian Right, Pentecostalism

Last night we saw the unedifying spectacle of several senior politicians from both sides of politics, led by would-be Prime Minister Peter Costello, ingratiating themselves with the happy-clappers of Hillsong:
Costello soaks up Hillsong’s praise The Age, 5-Jul-2005.

No doubt taking the lead from George Bush and Tony Blair, they’ve decided that wearing their faith on their sleeve, if not on their forehead, is good politics. Well maybe it is, in certain quarters. No doubt the Hillsong believers are warm supporters of Costello, if the rapturous welcome they gave him is any guide (this is his second trip to Hillsong). But what of the rest of the population? The pollies are saying faith is good, God is good, Christianity is good, while conveniently ignoring the divisiveness of such platitudes, and the huge divisions that exist within Christianity let alone between Christianity and other faiths. And does that mean that the 25+% of non-believers in Australia, or the 19.8 million people who don’t support fundamentalist Pentecostal Christianity, are now regarded by our potential future PM as second-class citizens?

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Filed in: Christian Right, Pentecostalism, Politics