Hillsong, Child Sexual Abuse, Australia, Legal, COVID-19, Maharishi U., Transcendental Meditation, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gaslighting
"Brian Houston, co-founder of the Hillsong megachurch and media empire, announced that he is stepping aside as global senior pastor, telling worshippers via a pre-recorded video played during the Sunday morning service at Hillsong's Sydney, Australia, headquarters that he would be taking a leave of absence from the church until the end of this year.
Citing a decision by the Hillsong board and external legal counsel, Houston, standing with his wife and co-founder, Bobbie, said "best practice" dictates that he absent himself completely from church leadership as he faces trial for allegedly failing to report sexual abuse. The court proceedings, he said, are "likely to be drawn out and take up most of 2022."
"It's been an unexpected season, and we are thankful for you all and for the community we share," Houston said on the video streamed toward the end of the service. "I never get tired of the praise reports and miracles, especially those committing to Jesus."
Houston's leave of absence comes after more than a year of scandals that have rocked the church both in Australia and abroad and amid Houston's own legal troubles at home. Houston stepped down from the board of Hillsong in September.
"The result is that the Hillsong Global Board feel it is in my and the church's best interest for this to happen, so I have agreed to step aside from all ministry responsibilities until the end of the year," Houston said in the January 30 video announcement.
Houston, 67, was charged in August with concealing a serious indictable offense of another person. Police say his late father, Frank Houston, also a preacher, indecently assaulted a young male in 1970. Court documents allege Houston knew of his father's abuse as early as 1999 and "without reasonable excuse," failed to disclose that information to police."
"Thread on the intersection among TM institutions, lifelong TM meditators, and COVID-19 virus denial and anti-vaccination."
"COVID-19 shut down access to most U.S. prisons including the Arizona State Prison Complex in Yuma where Shannon Gunderman volunteers with a group of Jehovah's Witness ministers.
Without warning, inmates were cut off from a robust Bible education program that included weekly Bible-based discourses, audience discussions, individual Bible studies and video presentations.
Within weeks, Jehovah's Witnesses pivoted their in-person ministry and activities around the country to virtual meetings and preaching through letters, telephone calls and videoconferencing."
People with low power or high power experience more Gaslighting.
" ... Gaslighting is a psychological control strategy used to manipulate a person's sense of reality and make them doubt their own perceptions, memories, and judgment.
In the gaslighter's world, only one person's perspective matters. More importantly, only one individual's perspective can matter: the gaslighter's. The victim's views, as if the ramblings of a crazy person, are dismissed as not worthy of serious consideration. The gaslighter wants the victim to truly accept the gaslighter's judgment. Why?
So that, being riddled with self-doubt, the victim of gaslighting does not take himself or herself seriously enough to voice an opinion. And instead relies completely on the gaslighter's judgment.
To be clear, gaslighters do not necessarily have the long-term goal of making their romantic partner think themselves ill or crazy. However, because gaslighters cannot tolerate being challenged or thought wrong, their partner having a mind of his or her own is experienced as a major threat, one that must be destroyed.
We now turn to the study by Samp and Graves. These authors define gaslighting in terms of dependence power, or the "capacity to influence derived from relational partners' reliance on one another." Gaslighting generates dependence power because the victim of gaslighting gradually depends more and more on the gaslighter—not just forQ approval (or love, money, and so forth) but to know what is real."
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